pageid
int64 12
74.6M
| title
stringlengths 2
102
| revid
int64 962M
1.17B
| description
stringlengths 4
100
⌀ | categories
list | markdown
stringlengths 1.22k
148k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
13,849,958 |
Effects of Hurricane Ivan in the Lesser Antilles and South America
| 1,171,661,592 | null |
[
"2004 in Grenada",
"2004 in South America",
"2004 in the Caribbean",
"Effects of tropical cyclones",
"Hurricane Ivan",
"Hurricanes in Grenada",
"Hurricanes in Trinidad and Tobago",
"Hurricanes in Venezuela",
"Tropical cyclones in 2004"
] |
In September 2004, Hurricane Ivan caused significant effects in the Lesser Antilles and South America, including 44 deaths and over \$1 billion in damage (2004 USD), primarily in Grenada where it was considered the worst hurricane in nearly 50 years. Hurricane Ivan developed from a tropical wave on September 2 and rapidly intensified to become a major hurricane, passing through the southern Lesser Antilles on September 7 with winds of 125 mph (201 km/h). At the time, its typical storm force winds extended outward up to 160 miles (260 km) with hurricane-force winds outward to 70 miles (110 km), and the northern portion of the eye passed over Grenada.
In the region, the worst damage occurred on Grenada, where the damage total of \$1.1 billion (2004 USD, (\$ 2023 USD)) represented 200% of its GDP. The hurricane damaged more than 14,000 homes and destroyed 30% of the houses, leaving about 18,000 people homeless. A total of 39 people were killed by the hurricane on the island. Elsewhere, Hurricane Ivan caused at least three fatalities and moderate damage in northern Venezuela. One person died each in Trinidad and Barbados. The name Ivan was later retired.
## Preparations
Early in the duration of the storm, the National Hurricane Center consistently forecast Ivan to track further to the north than it eventually did. Late on September 5, the government of Barbados issued a hurricane watch for its territory. Shortly thereafter, Saint Lucia was put under a hurricane watch and Grenada and its dependencies were put under a tropical storm watch. As the hurricane approached the southern Lesser Antilles, more watches were issued, and by 24 hours prior to Ivan passing through the island chain a hurricane warning was in effect for Barbados, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Tobago, and Grenada, and a tropical storm warning was in effect for Trinidad. With the path of Ivan more southerly than predicted, the hurricane warnings were downgraded to tropical storm warnings for the northern islands, and by late on September 7 when the eye of the hurricane passed near Grenada, hurricane warnings were in effect for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and Grenada. Subsequently, a tropical storm warning was issued for the northern coast of Venezuela through the Guajira Peninsula of Colombia.
In Venezuela, citizens in coastal areas of Falcón, Sucre and Isla Margarita were moved to safer areas, and several thousands were evacuated due to the hurricane. The Simón Bolívar International Airport, as well as three other mainland airports, were closed. Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. temporarily closed its oil refinery in Curaçao, and two ports were briefly shut down; this caused a delay in two oil deliveries. The Valero Energy Corporation shut down its largest oil refinery in Aruba. Prior to the arrival of the hurricane, oil companies in Trinidad and Tobago ceased production and removed workers from offshore rigs; the Atlantic LNG company closed exports. Seven shelters were opened on Tobago, where about 560 people evacuated for the storm. Two people died: one man trying to save his car, and one girl sleeping in her bed, when a tree fell on the roof above her room. Most evacuees were from low-lying areas, and on the day of the storm's passage most schools and businesses were closed. The two main airports in the country were closed, with one airline canceling all of its flights.
Over 1,000 people evacuated to emergency shelters on Grenada, including hundreds in low-lying areas in the capital city. Some shelters were damaged during the hurricane, forcing the evacuees to go elsewhere. Overall, the population responded little to the official advisories and recommendations, which potentially contributed to the death toll on the island. More than 1,000 residents of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines evacuated to 28 emergency shelters. On Barbados, officials closed schools and government buildings and prepared shelters prior to the arrival of the hurricane. To minimize danger, the island power grid was shut down. Four shelters opened on Saint Lucia, where many people sought safety during the storm.
## Impact
### Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, and the ABC islands
Along the northern coastline of Venezuela, the hurricane produced heavy precipitation and a storm surge of about 13 feet (4.0 m), which damaged 60 homes. Sustained winds on Isla Margarita peaked at 26 mph (42 km/h), and the most affected states were Falcón, Vargas, Aragua, Carabobo, and Anzoátegui. Further inland, two people drowned when a river overflowed its banks, and near Caracas a man died after strong winds toppled a wall. The combination of rainfall and winds destroyed 21 houses and blew off the roof of several others, affecting 1,376 people, of whom 80 were left homeless. Power outages and lack of water were reported. In the country, the hurricane caused 127 injuries, and a death toll reported between three and five. An initial news story reported 28 people missing offshore on three boats.
Moderate wind gusts of up 46 mph (74 km/h) were reported in Tobago, which downed several trees and caused power outages in seven villages; power was cut to more than 30% of the island. Twenty villages on the island suffered various forms of damage, and at least 45 homes lost their roofs. The hurricane left 22 people homeless and directly impacted about 1,000 people. The hurricane caused one death when a falling tree killed a woman. Wave heights were estimated at 65 feet (20 m), and at least one home collapsed and fell into the ocean. Rainfall from the storm's passage unofficially peaked at 16.2 inches (410 mm) on the island, which caused some mudslides. Some crop damage was also reported, and overall damage on Tobago was estimated at \$4.9 million (2004 USD, (\$ 2023 USD)); damage in neighboring Trinidad was minimal.
As Ivan continued to strengthen, it proceeded about 80 mi (130 km) north of the ABC islands on September 9. High winds blew away roof shingles and produced large swells that battered several coastal facilities. A developing spiral band dropped heavy rainfall over Aruba, causing flooding and \$1.1 million worth in structural damage.
### Grenada
Passing just to the south of the island, Hurricane Ivan produced strong winds in Grenada, with sustained winds reaching 120 mph (190 km/h) and gusts peaking at 133 mph (214 km/h) at Point Salines International Airport. The airport recorded 5.26 inches (134 mm) of precipitation during the hurricane's passage. Of the nation's six parishes, the four southernmost ones were most severely affected, constituting 80 percent of the total population.
The strong winds impacted more than 14,000 homes on Grenada with 90 percent of the nation's houses damaged and of which 30 percent were destroyed. The capital city of St. George's was severely damaged, where every major building was either damaged or destroyed. Ivan's passage either damaged or destroyed 85 percent of the structures on the island, including the nation's emergency operations center and a 17th-century prison, which allowed many inmates to briefly escape during the height of the storm. The hurricane damaged or destroyed 75 primary or secondary schools, with only two left in working condition. All of Grenada was left without power or running water.
York House, home of the Parliament of Grenada was destroyed.
Tourism was adversely affected; an estimated 60 percent of hotel rooms were damaged. The winds downed 80 percent of the nutmeg trees on the island, with other crop losses varying between 60 and 90 percent. An estimated 18,000 people were left homeless by the hurricane, and about 700 people sustained injuries from the storm. Ivan was considered the worst hurricane to strike the nation since Hurricane Janet in 1955; its passage resulted in 39 fatalities and \$1.1 billion in damage (2004 USD, (\$ 2023 USD), about 200% of its GDP and of which about 45% resulted from housing damage.
### Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, and northward
Wave heights from the hurricane reached 20 feet (6.1 m) along coastline portions of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, which washed away 2 homes; the storm surge destroyed 19 homes and damaged 40 more. On Union Island, the winds damaged the roof of a hospital, while the northern portion of the island sustained heavy damage from the waves. Moderate damage was also reported on Palm Island and Carriacou and Petite Martinique. The winds left more than two-thirds of the island without power, and also damaged the island's banana crop. Damage in the country totaled \$40 million (2004 USD, (\$ 2023 USD).
On the island of Barbados, sustained winds peaked at 69 mph (111 km/h) while gusts reached 92 mph (148 km/h), which damaged many trees and roofs. A total of 531 houses were damaged, of which 43 were completely destroyed. Additionally, four hotels sustained some damage. The winds left most of island without electricity, though officials worked quickly to restore the power. Rainfall from the storm was light, with less than 1 inch (25 mm) in most areas. Storm surge and wave action caused beach erosion that severely damaged most coastal roads. One death was reported on the island, and damage was estimated at more than \$5 million (2004 USD, (\$ 2023 USD).
Strong winds and rough surf caused moderate coastal damage to southern portions of Saint Lucia; the combination impacted houses near the coast and also led to losses in the banana crop. Minor roof damage was also reported, and damage totalled \$2.6 million (2004 USD \$ 2023 USD)) on the island; three serious injuries were reported on the island due to the hurricane, though no fatalities were reported. In Dominica, winds reached 43 mph (69 km/h). High waves from Ivan caused light damage to southwestern Martinique and Guadeloupe.
## Aftermath
The government of Barbados created a Hurricane Ivan Housing Recovery Project, which repaired or rebuilt 190 houses for people without the available funds; around 90 homes required minor immediate repairs, while the rest required significant reconstruction. The project finished in early 2006 for a total of \$5 million (2004 BBD, (\$ 2023 USD).
Several nearby countries assisted Grenada in its aftermath. The government of Guyana shipped about \$250,000 (2004 USD, \$40 million 2004 GYD) worth of sugar, as well as 100 members of the Guyana Defense Force to assist in restoring order and reconstruction. The government of Trinidad and Tobago sent 190 policemen, and the government of Anguilla sent 1,230 cases of water. A committee of Caribbean nations realized the local governments could not provide the support that Grenada needed in its aftermath, and thus turned to international assistance. Within a day of Ivan passing to the south of Grenada, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) deployed 67,600 gallons of water, 500 rolls of plastic sheeting, four 10,000 liter water bladder kits, and a water treatment kit; assistance from USAID totaled \$6 million (2004 USD) within a few weeks of the storm's passage, primarily in aid for reconstruction and rehabilitation. In the weeks subsequent to the hurricane, the European Commission Humanitarian aid Office (ECHO) provided €3 million (2004 EUR). By a year later, housing redevelopments and disaster preparation problems continued after being impacted by Hurricane Emily; as a result, the ECHO provided €1.2 million (2005 EUR) to Grenada in September 2005. Nine months after the hurricane, Chinese officials provided assistance in reconstruction and handling foreign debts after meeting with the Grenadian Prime Minister; in 2007, Chinese officials funded the construction of a new \$40 million (2007 USD) cricket stadium near St. George's. The Caribbean Development Bank approved a \$10 million loan (2004 USD) requested by the government of Grenada in July 2005, which was intended to assist in long-term development of the housing, business, and environmental sectors. Emergency operations in Grenada in coordination with the Pan American Disaster Response Unit ended in July 2005.
Within a few days after the hurricane passed, the Grenada Emergency Operations Center temporarily prevented relief supplies from entering the country to ensure the safety of the incoming items; the decision was reversed shortly thereafter, and planes flew supplies during daylight hours into the reopened airport. Severe looting occurred in the immediate aftermath of Ivan, prompting police officials to enact a curfew for the night hours. In the first week following the hurricane, aid was slow to the affected residents, due to the lack of an efficient aid distribution system. 30 official shelters and 17 prepared ones housed over 5,000 people in the aftermath of the storm. Thousands of people lost their jobs due to the hurricane, with all businesses shut down following the hurricane. By two months after the hurricane struck, 65 schools were opened, some of which serving as shelters; water and power were gradually restored to the island. By a year after the storm's passage, all schools were reopened, and most buildings enacted provisional repairs. Officials determined around 10,000 houses on the island required complete reconstruction, while a further 22,000 needed repairs. The government of Grenada initially planned to rebuild 1,000 houses in the year after the hurricane struck; by June 2005, 260 families were provided houses, with a further 85 under construction. The government also established a Material Assistance Programme, which provided \$5,000 (2004 XCD) of free materials to more than 5,000 families, as well as a total of \$4.3 million (2004 XCD) in low interest loans to 148 families. Several indirect fatalities occurred in the aftermath of the hurricane, primarily senior citizens.
## See also
- List of South America hurricanes
|
167,788 |
Antiochus XII Dionysus
| 1,173,512,681 |
King of Syria from 87 to 82 BC
|
[
"1st-century BC Seleucid monarchs",
"2nd-century BC births",
"82 BC deaths",
"Ancient Macedonians killed in battle",
"Monarchs killed in action",
"Year of birth unknown"
] |
Antiochus XII Dionysus Epiphanes Philopator Callinicus (Ancient Greek: Ἀντίοχος Διόνυσος Ἐπιφανής Φιλοπάτωρ Καλλίνικος; between 124 and 109 BC – 82 BC) was a Hellenistic Seleucid monarch who reigned as King of Syria between 87 and 82 BC. The youngest son of Antiochus VIII and, most likely, his Egyptian wife Tryphaena, Antiochus XII lived during a period of civil war between his father and his uncle Antiochus IX, which ended with the assassination of Antiochus VIII in 96 BC. Antiochus XII's four brothers laid claim to the throne, eliminated Antiochus IX as a claimant, and waged war against his heir Antiochus X.
By 87 BC, only two claimants remained, both brothers of Antiochus XII: Demetrius III and Philip I. The realm of Demetrius III was initially centered in Damascus but later extended over most of Syria. Demetrius III was defeated by Philip I and went into exile in Parthia, allowing Antiochus XII to gain control of Damascus while Philip I remained in the Syrian capital Antioch. Antiochus XII consolidated his territory within inner Syria and did not seek to expand into the territories of Philip I, who attempted to annex Damascus but was repulsed. Antiochus XII focused his attention on Syria's southern reaches into which the Judaeans and Nabataeans sought to expand.
Antiochus XII reinforced his southern frontier and warred with his neighbors, conducting two campaigns against Nabataea that included engagements with Judea. After several victories in his first campaign, Antiochus XII was killed towards the end of his second campaign against the Nabateans at the Battle of Cana in 82 BC. Damascus was captured by the forces of the Nabatean King Aretas III, and the Syrian throne was claimed by Antiochus X's widow Cleopatra Selene and her son Antiochus XIII.
## Name and background
Antiochus, Greek for "resolute in contention", was a dynastic name borne by many Seleucid monarchs. The Seleucid dynasty's founder Seleucus I named the capital of Syria, Antioch, in honor of his father Antiochus. Antiochus XII was the fifth and youngest son of Antiochus VIII and his Ptolemaic Egyptian wife Tryphaena, who married in 124 BC. In 109 BC, Tryphaena was killed by Antiochus VIII's half-brother Antiochus IX, who fought with Antiochus VIII from 113 BC for the throne of Syria. Antiochus XII's brothers were Seleucus VI, Antiochus XI, Philip I and Demetrius III.
Following Antiochus VIII's assassination in 96 BC, his second wife, Tryphaena's sister Cleopatra Selene, married Antiochus IX and then his son Antiochus X, who fought with Antiochus XII's four brothers for the throne. By 88 BC, only Demetrius III and Philip I remained; Demetrius III was originally based in Damascus before extending his authority to most of Syria. He was defeated by Philip I and his Parthian allies in 87 BC and exiled to Parthia, where he died of an unknown illness. Philip I took control of the capital, while Cleopatra Selene, now a widow, took shelter in Ptolemais with her sons by Antiochus X.
## Reign
The departure of Demetrius III left a power vacuum in Damascus that was filled by Antiochus XII. Coins minted during the reign of Demetrius III are dated to the Seleucid year (SE) 225 (88/87 BC), while the earliest coins minted during the reign of Antiochus XII have the date 226 SE (87/86 BC), suggesting there was a rapid assumption of power by Antiochus XII. Monarchs of the Hellenistic period did not use regnal numbers, which is a more modern practice, but instead used epithets to distinguish themselves from similarly named monarchs; Three of Antiochus XII's four epithets, Epiphanes (illustrious)–previously used by his father, Philopator (father-loving) and Callinicus (nobly victorious), served to emphasize the ancestry of his grandfather Demetrius II in contrast to the line of the latter's brother Antiochus VII, which was represented by Antiochus IX and his descendants; Callinicus may have been an echo of Demetrius II's epithet Nikator (victorious). He likely used his other epithet Dionysus to associate himself with the Greek god of wine in his role as conqueror of the East. Antiochus XII was depicted on coinage with an exaggerated hawked nose in the likeness of his father, as a means of strengthening the legitimacy of his succession.
### Policies and territory
According to historian Alfred Bellinger, Antiochus XII may have received assistance from Ptolemaic Egypt to gain his throne. This view is reflected in Antiochus XII's policies, which were targeted at the south in Nabataea and Judaea, but not towards expansion within the kingdom of Syria. His dominion was limited to inner Syria, centered on Damascus, which served as his capital and primary mint. Antiochus XII also ruled over the town of Gadara, governed by an official named Philotas. In 100 BC, Gadara had been conquered by the Hasmonean king of Judea Alexander Jannaeus, who partially destroyed its walls, but it was recaptured by the Seleucids in 93 BC. Gadara held great strategic importance for Syria as it served as a major military hub for operations in the south. Controlling it was vital to the war effort against the Judaeans, which led Antiochus to rebuild the city's defenses in 228 SE (85/84 BC). Historian Aryeh Kasher suggested that Antiochus XII dug what the first-century historian Josephus called the "trench of Antiochus" (or valley of Antiochus) to protect Damascus from the Nabataeans; the trench was probably located in the Hula Valley.
Seleucid coins often had depictions of their Greek deities, but the silver coinage of Antiochus XII depicted the supreme Semitic god Hadad on the reverse, possibly in recognition of the shrinking borders of the kingdom, which convinced the monarch of the importance of the local cults. By promoting indigenous deities, Seleucid kings hoped to gain the support of their non-Greek subjects. According to Bellinger, the use of Hadad indicated that Antiochus XII placed focus on his "intention of being first and foremost king of Damascus". During his reign, Demetrius III had also depicted a Semitic deity, Atargatis, on his currency. In the view of historian Kay Ehling [de], the change of coin imagery from Atargatis to Hadad probably served two goals: to imply that Antiochus XII had a different policy focus than his predecessor, and to demonstrate his intention of maintaining a good relationship with the Semitic population of Damascus, who comprised the majority of the inhabitants, to avoid tension with Greek settlers. Seleucid kings presented themselves as protectors of Hellenism and patronized intellectuals and philosophers, but Antiochus XII may have adopted a different attitude; he ordered the expulsion of such scholars.
### Military campaigns
Early in his reign, Antiochus XII attacked the Nabataeans and the Judaeans, whose territories both lay south of his own. This conflict was recorded by Josephus, although he made no mention of the name of the Nabataean king. Josephus mentioned two campaigns against the Nabataeans, but did not explain the motives leading the Syrian King to attack them. Modern scholars presented several theories. In the view of Israel Shatzman, Antiochus XII may have feared the growing power of the Nabataeans, who were expanding into southern Syria. Zayn Bilkadi suggested that Antiochus XII wanted to take control over the Nabataeans' crude oil industry, while Alexander Fantalkin and Oren Tal suggested that the Nabataeans actively supported Philip I in his attempts to take control over Antiochus XII's realm.
#### First Nabataean campaign and the incursions of Philip I
Antiochus XII's first Nabataean campaign was launched in 87 BC, and might have included a battle near Motho, modern Imtan in the region of Hauran, as proposed by the historian Hans Peter Roschinski, who drew on the writings of Stephanus of Byzantium. The Byzantine historian preserved in his book, Ethica, fragments from a lost work by the historian Uranius of Apamea, who wrote a book titled Arabica, which has been dated to 300 AD. In the account of Uranius, King Antigonus I (r. 306–301 BC) is killed at Motho by a king of the Arabs named Rabbel. The name Motho could refer to a northern city in Hauran or a southern city in Moab. The name of Antigonus was regularly "corrected" to Antiochus by different scholars who believed that Uranius was referring to Antiochus XII. Roschinski considered it conceivable that Stephanus was conflating two events taking place during the reign of the Nabataean King Rabbel I: a battle of Antiochus XII's first Nabataean campaign at Motho in the north, and the battle from the second Nabataean campaign in which Antiochus XII was killed. Shatzman, on the other hand, noted that nowhere in his work did Stephanus indicate that the battle of Motho took place in the north.
Taking advantage of his brother's absence, Philip I seized Damascus, aided by the governor of the city's citadel, Milesius, who opened the gates to him. According to Josephus, Milesius received no reward from Philip I, who attributed the betrayal to the general's fear, leading Milesius to betray Philip I, who had left the city to attend an event in the nearby hippodrome. The general closed the gates, locking Philip I out, and awaited the return of Antiochus XII, who had hastily ended his campaign when he heard of his brother's occupation of the city. Modern scholars noted that Seleucid currency, struck during campaigns against a rival (or usurper), portrayed the King sporting a beard. During his first two years, Antiochus XII's visage appeared beardless, but this changed in 228 SE (85/84 BC). This is possibly related to Philip I's attack on Damascus, but this supposition has little support, as Antiochus XII failed to take any action against his brother. No coins were minted during the period that Philip I held Damascus, indicating only a brief occupation of the city.
#### Second Nabataean campaign, war in Judea and death
Although his territory directly abutted Nabataean territory, for his second Nabataean campaign Antiochus XII instead chose to march his forces through Judaea along the coast, probably to attack the Nabataean-dominated Negev, which would have cut off the port city of Gaza, threatened Nabataean Mediterranean trade, and curbed Nabataean ambitions in the Transjordan. This route would have allowed Antiochus XII to keep Alexander Jannaeus at bay. According to Josephus, the Judaean King feared Antiochus XII's intentions and ordered the "Yannai Line" to be built, which consisted of a trench that fronted a defensive wall dotted with wooden towers. The trench stretched 28 kilometers (17 mi) from Caphersaba to the sea near Joppa. Antiochus XII leveled the trench, burned the fortifications, and continued his march into Nabataean territory.
The account of the campaign, written by Josephus, is subject to some debate; the historian wrote that Antiochus XII's forces defeated those of Alexander Jannaeus, but the eighth-century historian George Syncellus mentioned a defeat suffered by Antiochus XII at the hands of the Judaean king. The existence of the Yannai Line has been questioned by several historians, and Josephus's explanation of Alexander Jannaeus's attempt to stop the march of Antiochus XII, because of his fears of the latter's intentions, is unsatisfactory. Both the Nabataeans and Syrians were enemies of Judea and it would have been to Alexander Jannaeus's benefit if those two powers were in conflict. Syncellus may have been referring to an earlier confrontation between the Syrian king and Alexander Jannaeus. Thus the statement of Syncellus supports the notion that Antiochus XII's second Nabataean campaign was also aimed at Judea; perhaps Antiochus XII sought to annex the coastal cities of Alexander Jannaeus as retribution for the defeat mentioned by Syncellus. Another objective would be subduing the Judaeans to keep them from attacking Syria while Antiochus XII was busy in Nabataea.
The final engagement between the forces of Antiochus XII and the Nabataeans occurred near the village of Cana, the location of which is unknown, but is generally assumed by modern scholars to be southwest of the Dead Sea. Historian Siegfried Mittmann considered it to be synonymous with Qina, modern-day Horvat Uza, as mentioned by Josephus in Book 15 of his Antiquities. Details of the battle, as written by Josephus, spoke of the Nabataeans employing a feigned retreat, then counterattacking the Syrian forces before their ranks could be ordered. Antiochus XII managed to rally his troops and weathered the attack, but he fought in the front lines, jeopardizing his life, and he eventually fell. The year of Antiochus XII's death is debated, but his last coins struck in Damascus are dated to 230 SE (83/82 BC).
## Aftermath and legacy
According to Josephus, the death of the King resulted in a rout of the Syrian forces, with many being killed in the field or during the retreat. Survivors of the rout sheltered in Cana, where most died of starvation. Antiochus XII was the last energetic Seleucid king. Little is recorded of Philip I after his attempt at annexing Damascus, which was left without a protector after the death of Antiochus XII. Fearing the Ituraean ruler Ptolemy, the people of Damascus invited Aretas III of Nabataea to take the city. The numismatist Oliver D. Hoover suggested that Aretas III did not hold Damascus for long before the city returned to Seleucid possession.
The identity of Antiochus XII's wife remains unknown, but according to the sixth-century historian John Malalas, whose work is considered generally unreliable by scholars, the King had two daughters, Cleopatra and Antiochis. Cleopatra Selene, who went into hiding after the death of Antiochus X in 224 SE (89/88 BC), took advantage of Antiochus XII's death and declared her son Antiochus XIII king with herself as queen regent and regnant. Coins struck during her regency show the marks of the Damascus mint. Archeologist Nicholas L. Wright suggested that Cleopatra Selene's takeover of Damascus took place after 80 BC. Josephus called Antiochus XII the last Seleucid king, and Malalas, according to the translation of the historian Glanville Downey, followed suit; the last Seleucid king was in fact Antiochus XIII, who was dethroned in 64 BC after Antioch was annexed by the Romans.
## Family tree
\|- \|style="text-align: left;"\|Citations:
\|-
## See also
- List of Syrian monarchs
- Timeline of Syrian history
|
71,355,949 |
Guitar Songs
| 1,171,913,939 |
2022 EP by Billie Eilish
|
[
"2022 EPs",
"Albums produced by Finneas O'Connell",
"Billie Eilish EPs",
"Interscope Records EPs"
] |
Guitar Songs is the second extended play (EP) by American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish. It was released through download and streaming services on July 21, 2022, by Darkroom and Interscope Records. The EP marks Eilish's first body of work since Happier Than Ever (2021), her second studio album. Its release came as a surprise, a decision she made because she wanted to share new music to her fans as soon as she could. The track list contains two songs Eilish considered including for her third album but decided not to due to the lyrics' immediacy. She wrote the EP with her brother Finneas O'Connell, who produced both songs.
The two tracks are realist sentimental ballads, a departure from the fantastical themes of Eilish's debut studio album. Each contains personal lyrics that derive from contemporary life events, backed by simple acoustic guitars that emphasize Eilish's soft vocals. Eilish debuted the first track, "TV", during the Manchester concert of a 2022–2023 world tour in support of Happier Than Ever. It references the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, a court decision that devastated her. "The 30th", the other track, was the first song she made since Happier Than Ever. Written in December 2021, the song is titled after the day of a friend's near-death car crash—on November 30, 2021.
Music critics praised Guitar Songs for its vocals and songwriting. Many believed that Eilish was able to prove her talent as a songwriter through the EP's lyricism, with occasional praise towards how the production highlighted its vulnerable sentiments. Its tracks entered several national record charts worldwide, including the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. The two reached the top 50 of the Billboard Global 200, as well as the top 40 in four countries. Eilish and O'Connell played "TV" again and "The 30th" for the first time during the world tour's Asian leg, and the two performed them in Singapore in collaboration with its tourism board to promote the country.
## Writing
After the release of her second studio album, Happier Than Ever, in July 2021, Billie Eilish and her producer Finneas O'Connell began formulating ideas for songs she wanted to include on her next one by the end of the year. The first song they wrote after Happier Than Ever was "The 30th", titled as a reference to November 30, 2021. On that day, someone close to her nearly died in a car accident, and she described seeing the event firsthand as "the most indescribable thing [she had] to witness and experience". Eilish wrote "The 30th" on December 30, 2021, almost immediately upon recalling the accident on that date, fueled by stream-of-consciousness thoughts about the event. She said in an Apple Music 1 interview with Zane Lowe: "I had been writing down all these thoughts that I was having. I was with Finneas, and I was like, 'I'm sorry, I don't know what you were planning on doing, but we need to write this song about this right now.'"
Beginning February 3, 2022, Eilish and O'Connell embarked on a 2022–2023 world tour in support of Happier Than Ever. While on tour, Eilish allocated a certain period of time in her schedule for writing music, during which she was busy writing another song, "TV". The process was concurrent with the US Supreme Court's discussion around the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case. This took months; while Eilish was quick to finish the first verse and chorus, she wrote the remaining lyrics only after a draft of the court decision was leaked online, in May 2022. The leaked draft revealed plans to overturn Roe v. Wade, a landmark case which had made abortion a constitutional right in the country. Eilish, who has a track record with political activism, was saddened by the leak, and she felt like her rights as a woman were being stripped away. Weeks after she finished writing "TV", the Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade. Eilish bemoaned the decision, speaking in hindsight about the remaining lyrics: "It was a placeholder of doom."
## Release
During the Manchester concert of the Happier Than Ever world tour, on June 7, 2022, Eilish performed "TV" live for the first time. Finneas provided acoustic guitar instrumentation. This marked the first time since around 2017 that she gave a preview of an unreleased song. She was inspired to do it after seeing Harry Styles play "Boyfriends", another unreleased song, at the music festival Coachella. Explaining the decision, Eilish said in an NME cover story that she had "missed doing a song that no-one had heard yet" during concert tours from those years. The debut performance, she recalled, made her feel vulnerable, mainly because the song's subject matter was sensitive to her, but also because she considered the act of performing an unreleased song emotionally striking.
By July, "TV" and "The 30th" were the only songs the two had made; they tried to entertain the idea of including them on her third album. Eilish had shelved her voice memos for the songs for several weeks, and upon stumbling across the recordings again, she wanted to share to her fans what their lyrics had to offer as soon as possible. Noting the immediacy of "TV" and "The 30th", she said: "These songs are really current for me, and they're songs that I want to have said right now." After talking to Finneas, she excluded them from the track list, despite announcing plans to start the corresponding recording sessions beforehand. She refused to wait until the release to make the songs officially available to the public.
On July 21, Darkroom and Interscope Records released an extended play (EP), Guitar Songs, through download and streaming formats. It happened without prior announcement. Guitar Songs is Eilish's second EP, consisting of "TV" and "The 30th". Eilish went on Apple Music 1 briefly afterwards; apart from the song's immediacy, she told Lowe another reason she decided on the surprise release was she had grown tired of doing heavy, traditional promotion for upcoming music. She wanted to release songs like she had been doing early in her career—without much marketing, sometimes by previewing it for fans in live concerts. Prior to this, she said: "I just want to be able to go back to my roots and be the songwriter that I am."
"TV" and "The 30th" appeared on the record charts of multiple territories worldwide. Respectively, they debuted at numbers 52 and 79 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States. With this, Finneas became the first musician to spend 100 weeks on Billboard Hot 100 Producers, re-entering at number 16 after the release of Guitar Songs. Elsewhere, its tracks entered the top 40 of charts in Ireland, the UK, Iceland, Australia, and New Zealand; "TV" reached the top 40 in five more territories, and it had higher peaks than "The 30th". On the Billboard Global 200, "TV" debuted at number 25 and "The 30th" at number 50.
## Music and lyrics
Guitar Songs consists of "TV" and "The 30th", two sentimental ballads with minimal production that combines Eilish's soft vocals with an acoustic guitar. Music journalists wrote that the simple composition puts emphasis on the lyrics and the vocal performance, making these the driving qualities of the EP. The production is reminiscent of her and Finneas's oldest works, created when they wanted to make music at their parents' house with nothing but a guitar. Eilish explained their approach: "That's our roots... I wanted to go back and do it how we used to." Meanwhile, Billboard critic Jason Lipshutz described the EP with regards to its sound as follows: it could "either be a gesture toward a new sonic and lyrical direction, or a stopgap between best-selling full-lengths".
"TV" and "The 30th" were co-written by Finneas, who produced both tracks. Laura Snapes for The Guardian, describing the Guitar Songs writing style as realist, notes that the EP marks a departure from the lyrical themes of Eilish's breakout studio album; whereas the album focused more on horror imagery, the EP's stories are more grounded in real-life experiences. In her words, "TV" and "The 30th" showcase Eilish as she observes the destruction of several things in her life that she values dearly. Its lyrics are heavily personal, inspired primarily by events that happened to Eilish when she made the two songs.
### "TV"
"TV", the first on the tracklist, explores the topics of abandonment and a desire for numbness as a distraction from the problems that plague the world. Its poignant subject matters include eating disorders, mental health, the defamation trial between actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, and the outcome of the Dobbs case.
The song opens by describing a depressive episode. Unable to sleep, she distracts herself from a falling-out with an ex-partner by watching the reality TV show Survivor, then she expresses disapproval towards the apathy and cynicism of others around her. Eilish sings about "sinking in the sofa while we all betray each other", posing the question "what's the point of anything?" Jon Pareles of The New York Times interpreted the scene as a demonstration of "the ways entertainment nurtures distraction, alienation and apathy".
In the chorus, Eilish discusses the effects of her romantic relationships on the amount of time she can spend with her friends, and by the second verse, Eilish ponders how her friendships have also been affected by her celebrity status. With this, she feels the urge to skip meals but tries to restrain herself. Next, she laments how "the internet's gone wild watching movie stars on trial / While they're overturning Roe v. Wade." Eilish expressed anger about the situation in the NME cover story, questioning why the public prioritized fixating on the feud between Depp and Heard, which she found trivial, instead of showing concern about the future of abortion rights.
The chorus reappears after the second verse, and to close the song, Eilish uses a refrain. She repeats the phrase "maybe I'm the problem", blaming herself for the life issues she has faced while writing "TV". As the song approaches its final lyrics, it plays a sample of a cheering crowd, taken from Eilish's debut performance at Manchester.
### "The 30th"
"The 30th", in the views of Snapes and Tina Benitez-Evans of American Songwriter, is a more personal song compared to "TV". Centered around the November 30 car accident, "The 30th" is dedicated to the friend in question, whom Eilish considered one of her closest, and it details several minutiae that occurred around the event. Death and pain are the song's primary themes.
Eilish narrates how the friend went unconscious after the crash and remembered what happened to them once they woke up inside a travelling ambulance. One line comments on the scene: "when you're staring into space / It's hard to believe you don't remember it". Then, she sings she was on the same road as the car accident, switching the story towards her point of view. Even though there was a traffic jam and she saw ambulances driving past her, she says she "didn't even think of pulling over"; she fully learnt of her friend's condition the night after. In the chorus, Eilish reminds them that they had a phone conversation during confinement and they expressed their deepest fears about their health—Eilish replied "so was I" and decided to lighten the mood by complimenting their looks. When the song crescendos towards its bridge, the guitar chords slowly build up and the vocals begin to overlap, evoking a racing mind and a growing sense of panic.
In the bridge, Eilish lists alternate scenarios that question if the friend would still be alive had the accident occurred at another day and in other locations—a street with young children, a bridge without a railroad to block any oncoming traffic, or the Angeles Crest Highway during snowfall. She conjures the idea of the friend on a trip to someplace secluded with children in the passenger seats, unable to contact others for help. To close the bridge, she sings "if you changed anything, would you not have survived?" before she repeats the words "you're alive". On the last "you're alive", the vocal layering ends, leaving only Eilish's soft voice. The chorus appears again after the bridge, but this time, Eilish changes the final line "so was I" to "so am I".
August Brown, a writer for the Los Angeles Times, thought that the instrumentation for "The 30th" was reminiscent of the works of George Harrison, guitarist for the Beatles. Consequence's Mary Siroky opted to compare the song, specifically its build-up to the bridge, to the "unforgettable explosion" of Happier Than Ever's title track. To contrast the two, she argued that listeners expect "The 30th" to provide catharsis in a similar way as the title track, but it instead "pulls back, leaving us gasping for air". She also highlighted the bridge for its vivid narrative details.
## Critical reception
Many critics praised the tracks in Guitar Songs for their self-reflection and social commentary, some of whom considered it a testament to her writing abilities. Snapes said by using specific narrative details with "great subtlety" and discussing poignant themes without downplaying their seriousness, Eilish succeeded with creating effectively tragic stories for the EP. Entertainment columnists for the Manila Bulletin argued that these, alongside the song's confessional nature, made Eilish on par with "all the greatest songwriters" before her and served as a reminder she is one of her generation's "most treasured" ones.
Other music journalists focused on the EP's production. Two critics praised her vocals. Steffanee Wang, from Nylon, said it was "powerful", and the other, Lipshutz, said it was "increasingly confident". Lipshutz found the guitar subtle and relaxing in nature, and a similar sentiment was shared by an NME author, who wrote: "She sings over lulling acoustic guitars meant to soothe the most disillusioned of us." Snapes liked that the melody and Eilish's vocals were, to her, appropriate for the song's tone: "Fittingly, the melody of each line seems to tumble, each one a crumbling empire delivered in her tremulous, feather-light voice." Meanwhile, when two critics for the British edition of GQ called "TV" one of the best songs of 2022, they cited its use of the "spine-chilling" audience sample, which allowed it to form a "devastating stunner".
The tracks' personal, pensive nature led some to brand them with distinctive accolades. With "TV", The Guardian music journalist Alexis Petridis wrote that its melancholic tone made it a noteworthy addition to the Manchester concert's set list; he considered it the best one she performed there. On the other hand, "The 30th" was selected by Consequence as the best new song for the week coinciding with the release of Guitar Songs, with praised focused on its "balance of vulnerability, specificity, and utter relatability" that they believed was the reason for Eilish's trans-generational appeal. The publication wrote, "It's [...] the kind of unexpected quirk that keeps Eilish separated from so many of her other dark-pop cohorts." Benitez-Evans listed the song among ten of Eilish's best in an American Songwriter article published in February 2023.
## Live performances
Nine days after the EP's release, Eilish and Finneas visited the Amoeba Music record store in Hollywood to play "TV" along with three other songs. This was done in commemoration of Happier Than Ever's one-year anniversary. The two continued to include "TV" in set lists for select dates of the world tour, such as the one for the Singapore concert.
During the tour's Manila stop, Eilish and Finneas did a live rendition of "The 30th" for the first time. Eilish struggled with performing the song due to the personal lyrics, saying: "It's out but we’ve never done it live before. Please bear with me, it's a very hard song to sing, so I'm gonna try my best. This song is dedicated to my dear, dear friend, that's all I’m gonna be saying."
After the tour's Asian leg, she and Finneas collaborated with Singapore's tourism board to film live performances of "The 30th" and "TV". She shared the videos to her YouTube account on September 21, 2022. Recorded at the Cloud Forest of the Gardens by the Bay, the performances were part of a campaign to boost international travel to Singapore following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
## Track listing
Both tracks are written by Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell, and produced by Finneas.
1. "TV" – 4:41
2. "The 30th" – 3:36
## Personnel
Credits adapted from Tidal.
- Billie Eilish – vocals, songwriting, engineering, vocal editing
- Finneas O'Connell – songwriting, production, engineering, vocal editing, bass, drums, guitar, piano, programming, synthesizer
- Dave Kutch – mastering
- Rob Kinelski – mixing
- Eli Heisler – assistant mixing
## Charts
Guitar Songs did not appear in any album charts, so this section will show how its two tracks performed commercially.
### Weekly charts
### Year-end chart
## Certifications
|
211,830 |
Horologium (constellation)
| 1,170,703,278 |
Constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere
|
[
"Constellations listed by Lacaille",
"Horologium (constellation)",
"Southern constellations"
] |
Horologium (Latin hōrologium, the pendulum clock, from Greek ὡρολόγιον, lit. 'an instrument for telling the hour') is a constellation of six stars faintly visible in the southern celestial hemisphere. It was first described by the French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1756 and visualized by him as a clock with a pendulum and a second hand. In 1922 the constellation was redefined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as a region of the celestial sphere containing Lacaille's stars, and has since been an IAU designated constellation. Horologium's associated region is wholly visible to observers south of 23°N.
The constellation's brightest star—and the only one brighter than an apparent magnitude of 4—is Alpha Horologii (at 3.85), an aging orange giant star that has swollen to around 11 times the diameter of the Sun. The long-period variable-brightness star, R Horologii (4.7 to 14.3), has one of the largest variations in brightness among all stars in the night sky visible to the unaided eye. Four star systems in the constellation are known to have exoplanets; at least one—Gliese 1061—contains an exoplanet in its habitable zone.
## History
The French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille first described the constellation as l'Horloge à pendule & à secondes (Clock with pendulum and seconds hand) in 1756, after he had observed and catalogued almost 10,000 southern stars during a two-year stay at the Cape of Good Hope. He devised fourteen new constellations in previously uncharted regions of the southern celestial hemisphere, which were not visible from Europe. All but one honoured scientific instruments, and so symbolised the Age of Enlightenment. The constellation name was Latinised to Horologium in a catalogue and updated chart published posthumously in 1763. The Latin term is ultimately derived from the Ancient Greek ὡρολόγιον, for an instrument for telling the hour.
## Characteristics
Covering a total of 248.9 square degrees or 0.603% of the sky, Horologium ranks 58th in area out of the 88 modern constellations. Its position in the southern celestial hemisphere means the whole constellation is visible to observers south of 23°N. Horologium is bordered by five constellations: Eridanus (the Po river or Nile river), Caelum (the chisel), Reticulum (the reticle), Dorado (the dolphin/swordfish), and Hydrus (the male water snake). The three letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "Hor". The official constellation boundaries are defined by a twenty-two-sided polygon (illustrated in infobox). In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between and , while the declination coordinates are between −39.64° and −67.04°.
## Features
### Stars
Horologium has one star brighter than apparent magnitude 4, and 41 stars brighter than or equal to magnitude 6.5. Lacaille charted and designated 11 stars in the constellation, giving them the Bayer designations Alpha (α Hor) through Lambda Horologii (λ Hor) in 1756. In the mid-19th century, English astronomer Francis Baily removed the designations of two—Epsilon and Theta Horologii—as he held they were too faint to warrant naming. He was unable to find a star that corresponded to the coordinates of Lacaille's Beta Horologii. Determining that the coordinates were wrong, he assigned the designation to another star. Kappa Horologii, too, was unable to be verified—although it most likely was the star HD 18292—and the name fell out of use. In 1879, American astronomer Benjamin Apthorp Gould assigned designations to what became Mu and Nu Horologii as he felt they were bright enough to warrant them.
At magnitude 3.9, Alpha Horologii is the brightest star in the constellation, located 115 (± 0.5) light-years from Earth. German astronomer Johann Elert Bode depicted it as the pendulum of the clock, while Lacaille made it one of the weights. It is an orange giant star of spectral type K2III that has swollen to around 11 times the diameter of the Sun, having spent much of its life as a white main-sequence star. At an estimated 1.55 times the mass of the Sun, it is radiating 38 times the Sun's luminosity from its photosphere at an effective (surface) temperature of 5,028 K.
At magnitude 4.93, Delta Horologii is the second-brightest star in the constellation, and forms a wide optical double with Alpha. Delta itself is a true binary system composed of a white main sequence star of spectral type A5V that is 1.41 times as massive as the Sun with a magnitude of 5.15 and its fainter companion of magnitude 7.29. The system is located 179 (± 4) light-years from the earth.
At magnitude 5.0, Beta Horologii is a white giant 63 times as luminous as the Sun with an effective temperature of 8,303 K. It is 312 (± 4) light-years from Earth, and has been little-studied. Lambda Horologii is an ageing yellow-white giant star of spectral type F2III that spins around at 140 km/second, and is hence mildly flattened at its poles (oblate). It is 161 (± 1) light-years from Earth.
With a magnitude of 5.24, Nu Horologii is a white main sequence star of spectral type A2V located 169 (± 1) light-years from Earth that is around 1.9 times as massive as the Sun. Estimated to be around 540 million years old, it has a debris disk that appears to have two components: an inner disk is orbiting at a distance of 96+9
−37 AU, while an outer disk lies 410+24
−96 AU from the star. The estimated mass of the disks is 0.13%±0.07% the mass of the Earth.
Horologium has several variable stars. R Horologii is a red giant Mira variable with one of the widest ranges in brightness known of stars in the night sky visible to the unaided eye. It is around 1,000 light-years from Earth. It has a minimum magnitude of 14.3 and a maximum magnitude of 4.7, with a period of approximately 13 months. T and U Horologii are also Mira variables. The Astronomical Society of Southern Africa reported in 2003 that observations of these two stars were needed as data on their light curves was incomplete. TW Horologii is a semiregular variable red giant star that is classified as a carbon star, and is 1,370 (± 70) light-years from Earth.
Iota Horologii is a yellow-white dwarf star 1.23 (± 0.12) times as massive and 1.16 (± 0.04) times as wide as the Sun with a spectral type of F8V, 57 (± 0.05) light-years from Earth. Its chemical profile, movement and age indicate it formed within the Hyades cluster but has drifted around 130 light-years away from the other members. It has a planet at least 2.5 times as massive as Jupiter orbiting it every 307 days. HD 27631 is a Sun-like star located 164 (± 0.3) light-years from Earth which was found to have a planet at least 1.45 times as massive as Jupiter that takes 2,208 (± 66) days (six years) to complete an orbit. WASP-120 is a yellow-white main-sequence star around 1.4 times as massive as the Sun with a spectral type of F5V that is estimated to be 2.6 (± 0.5) billion years old. It has a massive planet around 4.85 times the mass of Jupiter that completes its orbit every 3.6 days, and has an estimated surface temperature of 1,880 (± 70) K.
With an apparent magnitude of 13.06, Gliese 1061 is a red dwarf of spectral type M5.5V that has 12% of the mass and 15% of the diameter of the Sun, and shines with only 0.17% of its luminosity. Located 12 light-years away from Earth, it is the 20th-closest single star or stellar system to the Sun. In August 2019, it was announced that it had three planets, one of which lay in its habitable zone.
### Deep-sky objects
Horologium is home to many deep-sky objects, including several globular clusters. NGC 1261 is a globular cluster of magnitude 8, located 53,000 light-years from Earth. It lies 4.7 degrees north-northeast of Mu Horologii. The globular cluster Arp-Madore 1 is the most remote known globular cluster in the Milky Way at a distance of 123.3 kiloparsecs (402,000 light-years) from Earth.
NGC 1512 is a barred spiral galaxy 2.1 degrees west-southwest of Alpha Horologii with an apparent magnitude of 10.2. About five arcmin (13.8 kpc) away is the dwarf lenticular galaxy NGC 1510. The two are in the process of a merger which has been going on for 400 million years.
The Horologium-Reticulum Supercluster is a galaxy supercluster, second in size only to the Shapley Supercluster in the local universe (anything within 200 mpc of Earth). It contains over 20 Abell galaxy clusters and covers more than 100 deg<sup>2</sup> of the sky, centered roughly at equatorial coordinates α = , δ = .
## See also
- Horologium (Chinese astronomy)
|
267,307 |
South Asian river dolphin
| 1,166,111,187 |
Genus of freshwater dolphin
|
[
"Apex predators",
"Cetacean genera",
"Mammals of South Asia",
"River dolphins",
"Taxa named by Johann Georg Wagler"
] |
South Asian river dolphins are toothed whales in the genus Platanista, which inhabit fresh water habitats in the northern Indian subcontinent. They were historically considered to be one species (P. gangetica) with the Ganges river dolphin and the Indus river dolphin being subspecies (P. g. gangetica and P. g. minor respectively). Genetic and morphological evidence led to their being described as separate species in 2021. The Ganges and Indus river dolphins are estimated to have diverged 550,000 years ago. They are the only living members of the family Platanistidae and the superfamily Platanistoidea. Fossils of ancient relatives date to the late Oligocene.
South Asian river dolphins are small but stocky cetaceans with long snouts or rostra, broad flippers, and small dorsal fins. They have several unusual features. Living in murky river waters, their eyes are tiny and lensless. The dolphins rely instead on echolocation for navigation. The skull has large crests over the melon, which help direct their echolocation signals. These dolphins prey mainly on fish and shrimp and hunt them throughout the water column. They are active through the day and are sighted in small groups. Both species are listed as endangered by the IUCN Red List of mammals. Major threats include dams, barrages, fishing nets, and both chemical and acoustic pollution.
## Taxonomy
South Asian river dolphins were traditionally considered to be one species, Platanista gangetica, with the Ganges and Indus River populations being subspecies (P. g. gangetica and P. g. minor, respectively). Heinrich Julius Lebeck named the Ganges river dolphin Delphinus gangeticus in 1801, while Johann Georg Wagler coined the genus name Platanista in 1830, a Latin word derived from the Greek "platanistēs", which may be related to the Greek words platē ("oar") or platē ("flat, broad"). This name was first given to the Ganges dolphin by Pliny the Elder in Naturalis Historia back in 77 CE. In 1853, Richard Owen described a specimen from the Indus and considered it to be the same species as the Ganges river dolphin, but a smaller form.
Based on differences in skull and vertebrae structure, blood proteins, and lipids, scientists declared them to be separate species in the 1970s. The results of these studies were criticized for their small sample sizes and the absence of statistical analyses; by the late 1990s, the two populations were again considered to be two subspecies of a single species. A 2014 mitochondrial DNA study found insufficient differences to support their classification as separate species. However, a 2021 study reanalyzed the two populations and found significant genetic divergence and major differences in skull structure; this led to the conclusion that the two were indeed distinct species.
### Evolution
South Asian river dolphins are the only surviving members of the family Platanistidae and the superfamily Platanistoidea. They are not closely related to other river dolphins of the families Lipotidae, Pontoporiidae, and Iniidae, which all independently adapted to freshwater habitats. The following cladogram is based on Gatesy and colleagues (2012) and McGowen and colleagues (2020); and shows the relationship of South Asian river dolphins to other living toothed whale families:
Several fossil species have been classified under Platanistoidea, the earliest of which date back to the late Oligocene (c. 25 million years ago). The number of species peaked around the early Miocene (c. 19 million years ago) and declined afterward. Examples of ancient platanistids include the genera Otekaikea and Waipatia and the species Awamokoa tokarahi of late Oligocene New Zealand, the family Allodelphinidae of early Miocene North Pacific, and Notocetus vanbenedeni and Aondelphis talen of early Miocene Patagonia. Platanistidae fossils have been found in Miocene deposits in Europe and North America. Fossil Platanistoidea showed a diversity of cochlea shapes, though Platanista was unusual in that it developed flatter spirals with larger gaps between them.
During the middle Miocene, the ancestor of Platanista entered the Indo-Gangetic Plain, then covered by inland seas, and remained there when sea levels dropped in the late Neogene and its environment converted to freshwater. River dolphins likely traveled from the Ganges River basin to the Indus via stream capture within the last five million years. The split between the two species is estimated to have occurred around 550,000 years ago based on mitochondrial DNA.
## Description
South Asian river dolphins are stocky with broad, squared-off pectoral fins; elongated, slender rostrums (snouts); and tiny triangular dorsal fins. Their neck joints give them great flexibility. Unusual among cetaceans, the blowhole is slit-shaped. The finger bones can also be seen through the flippers. South Asian river dolphins possess some features that are "primitive" for a cetacean, such as a cecum connected to the gut and air sacs near the blowhole. The testes of the males are located closer to the underside than in marine dolphins and descend more. Their skin ranges from grey to greyish-brown in colour, though the rostrum and surrounding areas may have some pinkish colouration. The Indus species tends to be more brownish.
In one study sampling 46 Ganges river dolphins, the maximum length and weight recorded were 267 cm (8.76 ft) and 108 kg (238 lb). For the Indus species, the maximum length and weight were 241 cm (7.91 ft) and 120 kg (260 lb) (80 individuals sampled). Female Ganges dolphins are generally longer than Indus dolphins of both sexes, while male Ganges dolphins are shorter than Indus dolphins of both sexes. Indus dolphins tend to be proportionally heavier than Ganges dolphins, independent of sex.
South Asian river dolphin skulls have unusual features. The maxilla (fixed upper jawbone) has pneumatic extensions or "crests" on each side which curve around the melon and protrude forward over the rostrum. These likely help them focus their echolocation signals in their riverine environment. The Ganges species also has a protrusion near the frontal suture, which distinguishes it from the Indus species. The teeth of South Asian river dolphins are curved and longer in the front, where they remain exposed when the jaws are closed. Indus dolphins have more teeth than Ganges dolphins, averaging 33.2 teeth in the upper jaw and the 32.9 in the lower jaw, as compared to 28.4 in the upper jaw and 29.4 in the lower.
Living in murky waters, South Asian river dolphins are nearly blind, their tiny eyes having flattened corneas and no lens. The retina—which connects to a reduced optic nerve—does not form images but instead merely discerns light. The animal relies on a sphincter-like muscle around the eye to control access to the retina and prevent light scattering, similar to a pinhole. The ears are adapted to hearing low frequencies, having a short, flattened cochlea with widely spaced spirals.
## Distribution and habitat
South Asian river dolphins inhabit the northern waterways of the Indian subcontinent. Ganges river dolphins live in the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Meghna, Karnaphuli, and Sangu rivers and their tributaries. Their range extends from the Himalayan foothills to the Ganges Delta, across the countries of Nepal, India and Bangladesh. It is unknown if they are present in Bhutan. Outflows of freshwater into the Bay of Bengal have allowed them to swim along the coast, and there is at least one record of an individual entering the Budhabalanga River, around 300 km (190 mi) southwest of the Ganges Delta. This species has maintained much of its range since the 19th century but has disappeared from some northern and western rivers and waterways.
The Indus river dolphin mainly lives in the Indus River of Pakistan, with three subpopulations between the Chashma, Taunsa, Guddu, and Sukkur barrages. Two other populations exist south of Sukkur and in the Beas River of India. In the 19th century, this species was reported to have occurred throughout the Indus River system, from the Indus River Delta north to Kalabagh just south of the Himalayas, including all the main tributaries. The Indus river dolphin is reported to have disappeared between the Jinnah and Chashma barrages after 2001.
South Asian river dolphins inhabit major river channels during the dry season and travel to smaller tributaries for the monsoon. They are most commonly found in stream pools, meanders, and confluences, and around river islands and shoals, which produce relatively stable waters. They can be found in pools over 30 m (98 ft) deep, but usually dwell in shallower water.
## Behaviour and life history
South Asian river dolphins appear to be active throughout the day. Living in flowing waters, they swim almost constantly with only brief periods of sleep, which add up to seven hours per day. They swim on their sides when in shallow water. River dolphins generally surface with the rostrum, head, and dorsal fin breaking the water and rarely breach or raise the tail fluke, though surface activity can vary based on age, distance from shore and time of day. Diving may last as long as eight minutes among adults and subadults; dives of newborns and juveniles are not as long.
River dolphins are typically seen alone or in groups of up to 10 individuals, though enough natural resources may attract up to 30 dolphins. Individuals do not appear to have strong social bonds, outside of mothers and calves. Living in shallow river environments with acoustic obstacles, these dolphins echolocate using repetitive clicks spaced 10 to 100 milliseconds apart. Their clicks are about one octave below those of oceanic toothed whales of comparable size, meaning that they provide less information about the location of an object, but the dolphins' maxillary crests likely compensate by providing greater directional sensitivity. Vocalizations used for communication include bursts and twitterings.
River dolphins feed mainly on fish and shrimp. In one study, around 46% of prey items were found to be bottom-dwelling species, while 31% were near the surface, and 23% occupied the middle of the column. The most frequently taken prey are bagrid catfish, barbs, glass perches, spiny eels, gobies, and prawns. When hunting at the surface, dolphins listen for the movements of schooling fish which are then herded with spins, side-swimming, and lobtailing. Echolocation signals are not frequently used at the surface, since many fish at this level can hear ultrasound. At the mid-surface level, the dolphins use more echolocation clicks to find prey hidden in clutter and vegetation as far as 20 m (66 ft) away. They flush out bottom-dwelling prey by digging around.
Little is known about reproduction in these river dolphins. Courtship and mating behaviour for the Ganges species has been documented from March to May, when the water level is lower, and involves multiple males chasing one female and ends with one of the males earning the right to mate. Calves are born around a year later. Births in the Ganges river dolphin appear to be most frequent between December and January and between March and May. For Indus river dolphins, newborns are most commonly seen between April and May. Indus river dolphins calves are around 70 cm (28 in) long at birth and may nurse for up to a year. They eat their first solid food within a couple months. South Asian river dolphins reach sexual maturity at around ten years, though males may not reach their adult size until 20 years. Growth layers in the teeth suggest South Asian river dolphins can live up to 30 years.
## Conservation
As of 2022, the IUCN Red List of mammals lists both South Asian river dolphins as endangered. Two assessments in 2014 and 2015 estimated populations of 3,500 for the Ganges river dolphin and 1,500 for the Indus river dolphin. The Ganges species appears to be decreasing, while the Indus species may be increasing. The habitat of these river dolphins intersects with some of the most densely populated areas, leading to intense competition for water and resources.
The creation of dams and barrages in the Indus River system have heavily fragmented the range of the Indus river dolphin, leading to a population decline of 80% since the 19th century. Around 50 such structures have been built in the historical range of the Ganges species. Fragmentation of populations makes these dolphins more vulnerable to inbreeding. The heavy extraction of water in these dense populations also puts the dolphins at risk.
River dolphins accumulate high amounts of persistent organic pollutants, pesticides, and heavy metals in their system due to being at the top of their riverine food web. Hence, they are seen as bioindicators for the health of river systems. Fisherman compete with these animals for fish of certain sizes. Dolphins captured in fishing nets are usually accidental, but dolphin oil is sought after as a fish lure, and thus fishermen may be motivated to kill caught dolphins. Being nearly blind and relying on echolocation for navigation, river dolphins are also negatively affected by noise pollution from boats.
South Asian river dolphins are protected by law in all the states they inhabit. They can be found in numerous protected areas, including ones established specifically for them, such as the Indus Dolphin Reserve in Pakistan and the Vikramshila Gangetic Dolphin Sanctuary in India. International trade is prohibited by the listing of the South Asian river dolphins on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. The Ganges and Indus river dolphins are considered to be the national aquatic animals of India and Pakistan respectively.
## See also
- Irrawaddy dolphin
- List of cetaceans
- Makara – water creature from Hindu mythology that is sometimes depicted dolphin-like
- Project Dolphin (India)
|
451,203 |
Margate F.C.
| 1,160,060,745 |
Association football club in England
|
[
"1896 establishments in England",
"Association football clubs established in 1896",
"Football clubs in England",
"Football clubs in Kent",
"Isthmian League clubs",
"Kent Football League (1894–1959)",
"Margate",
"Margate F.C.",
"National League (English football) clubs",
"Southern Counties East Football League",
"Southern Football League clubs"
] |
Margate Football Club, originally called Margate Town, is an English football club based in the seaside resort of Margate, Kent. The club's first team play in the . The club was known during the 1980s as Thanet United.
The club was founded in 1896 and joined the Southern Football League in 1933. After a spell in the Kent League after World War II the team returned to the Southern League in 1959 and remained there until 2001 when they gained promotion to the Football Conference, the highest level of English non-League football. Their stay at this level saw the team forced to groundshare with other clubs due to drawn-out and problematic redevelopment work at their Hartsdown Park stadium. The stadium has been the home of Margate FC since 1929, the same year the park itself opened to the public, and during the three years spent away from their own ground, they were expelled from the Conference National and subsequently relegated to the Isthmian League.
The team, nicknamed "The Gate", have to date reached the third round proper of England's premier cup competition, the FA Cup, on two occasions. On the second of these occasions they played Tottenham Hotspur, a First Division team and the reigning UEFA Cup holders.
## History
### Early years
Margate Football Club was founded in 1896 as an amateur club and was originally called Margate Town, playing friendly matches on local school grounds. In the years before the First World War the club played in several different amateur leagues, with little success, and played at various grounds in the Margate area, before settling on a pitch at what would later become the Dreamland amusement park in 1912. This ground became known as the Hall-by-the-Sea Ground, taking its name from a local dance hall.
### Inter-war years
After the First World War, Margate joined the Kent League, but in 1923 the league suspended the team due to financial irregularities and the club promptly folded. A year later the club reformed, initially under the name Margate Town, and returned to the Kent League, still playing at Dreamland, but folded again due to heavy debts. In 1929 the club reformed again and moved to its present home at Hartsdown Park, leasing part of the park from the local council for conversion into a football stadium. Around this time Margate signed a Dutch player, a highly unusual move in an era when it was almost unknown for Continental players to move to English clubs. Goalkeeper Gerrit "Gerard" Keizer, who joined the Kent club from Ajax Amsterdam, later went on to play for Arsenal.
From 1934 until 1938 Margate, by now playing in the Southern League, served as the official nursery side for Arsenal; under this arrangement the London club regularly loaned promising young players to Margate in order for them to gain match experience. In the second season of this arrangement, 1935–36, Margate reached the third round proper of the FA Cup for the first time, losing 3–1 to Blackpool after defeating Queens Park Rangers and Crystal Palace in the earlier rounds, but shortly after this the club had to step back down to the Kent League for financial reasons.
### Post-war years
After the Second World War, the Gate continued to play in the Kent League under new manager Charlie Walker, who led the team to two Kent League championships but was then controversially sacked. The team slumped during a succession of rapid managerial changes which only ended in 1950 when Almer Hall was appointed manager, a post he was to hold for the next twenty years. Under Hall, the team won a host of local cup honours and reached the rounds proper of the FA Cup on a number of occasions, but never managed to match this success in league competition.
In 1959–60 Margate returned to the Southern League after the Kent League folded, and in 1962–63 won the Division One championship and with it promotion to the Premier Division. Two years later the club turned full-time professional, but this policy proved financially untenable when the team were relegated back to Division One in 1965–66. Nonetheless, they won promotion at the first attempt and returned to the Premier Division in 1967.
During the 1970s, Margate endured severe financial problems and a series of mediocre league seasons, but took part in two famous FA Cup ties. In 1971 the Gate lost 11–0 to Bournemouth, with Ted MacDougall scoring a cup record nine goals. One year later, Margate beat Swansea City and Walton & Hersham to set up a third-round tie against First Division Tottenham Hotspur, then UEFA Cup holders. A record crowd of around 14,500 packed into Hartsdown Park for a match which Margate lost 6–0.
In 1981 the club changed its name to Thanet United, a name which was retained until 1989 when the name reverted to Margate. In the final season under the Thanet name, the team achieved its lowest league placing for many years, escaping relegation from the Southern League by just one place.
### Conference era
In 1996, the club's centenary year, the club appointed Chris Kinnear as manager. In 1997–98 he took the team to the first round proper of the FA Cup where they played Fulham in a home tie that drew a crowd of 5,100. Although the Gate took the lead, the Cottagers eventually won 2–1. The following season saw the club finally win promotion to the Southern League Premier Division, albeit only after an appeal was lodged against the league's initial refusal to allow the team promotion due to the club failing to carry out necessary ground improvements in time. The Premier Division championship followed in the 2000–01 season, and with it promotion to the Football Conference.
The 2001–02 season was Gate's first-ever season of Conference football and they finished the season in eighth place. In the 2002–03 season the team began groundsharing at Dover Athletic's Crabble Athletic Ground while redevelopment work took place at Hartsdown Park, but various problems stalled the planned redevelopment. On the pitch, Margate enjoyed more success in the FA Cup when, after defeating Leyton Orient in the first round, they were drawn at home to Cardiff City in the second round, but lost 3–0 at Crabble. The following season, despite finishing sixteenth, the Gate were forcibly relegated one division due to the ongoing delays and problems with the redevelopment plans for Hartsdown Park.
Margate spent the 2004–05 season in the Conference South, now groundsharing at Ashford Town. Amid ongoing issues with the redevelopment work, which at one point made it seem very likely the club would fold completely, Margate were again relegated to the Isthmian League Premier Division.
### Return to Hartsdown Park
In August 2005, Margate returned to Hartsdown Park after three years away. During an indifferent season manager Kinnear was controversially suspended. Robin Trott was placed in temporary charge as player-manager in April 2006 and, after an unbeaten five game run, was given a one-year contract at the end of the season. After Margate narrowly missed out on the play-offs in 2006–07 the club announced that Trott was to be given a new contract for the 2007–08 season. Shortly before the end of the season, however, Trott was sacked. His replacement, Barry Ashby, was himself sacked two months into the 2008–09 season. Shortly afterwards, the club narrowly avoided being subject to High Court action over unpaid debts to HM Revenue and Customs. The club finished the season in 19th position in the table and was expected to be relegated to Division One South, but was reprieved due to other clubs folding. The following season, Margate again finished in the bottom four but the club again received a reprieve from relegation.
Chris Kinnear returned for a second spell to manage the team at the start of the 2011–12 season. The following season Margate were sitting at the top of the table in January, however, after much speculation, Kinnear accepted the vacant manager's position at Dover Athletic. Goalkeeper Craig Holloway was placed in temporary charge of the side, and brought in Simon Osborn as joint manager. The club dropped from the top of the table and finished outside the play-offs. After a poor start to the 2013–14 season, Holloway resigned his role as joint manager, leaving Osborn in sole charge. Results failed to improve and Osborn was sacked at the beginning of December 2013.
In the 2014–15 season, the first full season under manager Terry Brown, Margate finished in 3rd place in the Isthmian League Premier Division, ensuring the team's qualification for the play-offs for promotion to the National League South (formerly Conference South). The play-offs were delayed by a lengthy appeal against a points deduction applied to fifth-placed Enfield Town, but when they eventually began, Margate defeated Dulwich Hamlet in the semi-finals. In the final Margate played Hendon, who had finished one place above them in the league, but a single goal from Ryan Moss gave them victory and promotion to the National League South. Following a poor start to the 2015–16 season, Terry Brown was sacked. and replaced by Margate goalkeeper Nikki Bull and defender Jamie Stuart until the end of that season. In April 2016 Bull was appointed first team manager, but was unable to prevent the team being relegated. As of 2021 the team continue to play in the Isthmian League Premier Division.
## Colours and crest
Margate's modern colours are blue and white, first adopted in 1949, but the team have worn a number of other colour combinations. The club's earliest known colours were black and white, and in the 1930s the team wore amber and black. The club's current crest is a simplified version of the coat of arms of the town of Margate, incorporating a lion conjoined to a ship's hull (a reference to the arms of the Cinque Ports) and the white horse emblem of Kent.
Margate's shirts have borne various sponsors' logos including the pop group Bad Manners, whose name appeared on the team's kit as part of a sponsorship deal with their record label in the late 1990s. Lead singer Buster Bloodvessel was running a hotel in Margate at the time and actually joined the football club's board of directors. Another band, The Libertines, sponsored the club for the 2018–19 season after starting work on a recording studio and hotel in the town.
## Stadium
The stadium in Hartsdown Park has been Margate's home since 1929, the club having used at least six grounds before moving to Hartsdown Park, the same year the park itself opened to the public. Little development of the stadium took place until 2002, when the club launched an ambitious scheme to completely redevelop the site. The club moved out and the old stadium, which was constructed mainly from timber and corrugated iron, was demolished in early 2003, but the local council disputed the plans submitted. Although planned to be completed by August 2003, the redevelopment dragged on for three years, mired in issues regarding planning permission for the commercial facilities the club wanted to build in addition to the stadium itself. The team spent three years ground-sharing with other Kent clubs, but club officials' failure to confirm a return date to Hartsdown led to Margate's expulsion from the Conference National in 2004. In 2005 the club was finally able to return to the ground, albeit with pre-fabricated stands and temporary buildings in place. In 2014, the club applied to the local council for permission to erect six new temporary stands.
The club's ultimate plan involves a stadium with a capacity of 5,000 forming part of a complex incorporating a hotel, fitness centre, conference centre, all-weather pitch and ten 5-a-side pitches. Although it was announced that work on the 5-a-side pitch complex was to begin in May 2007, ground was not in fact broken for a further four months.
## Supporters
In the 1920s crowds of up to 3,000 were common at Hartsdown Park, but in the modern era attendances are more modest. At the midpoint of the 2017–18 season, the team's average attendance was 507. This was third highest in the Isthmian League Premier Division behind Dulwich Hamlet and Billericay Town. During their three seasons in the Conference National, from 2001–02 to 2003–04, the club's average home attendances were 1,233, 684, and 562.
The club has an active independent supporters' association. The fans took an active part in getting the stadium ready for the club's return in 2005.
## Statistics and records
Margate's best ever league finish since the establishment of the Alliance Premier League in 1979 was the 8th place finish in the Conference National (level 5 of the overall English football league system) in 2001–02. The team have twice progressed as far as the third round proper of the FA Cup, in 1935–36 and 1972–73, and reached the quarter-finals of the FA Trophy in 2001–02. The club's biggest victory is 12–1, achieved against Deal Cinque Ports in the FA Cup first qualifying round in 1919 and against Erith & Belvedere in the Kent League in the 1927–28 season. The Gate's heaviest defeat was 1–0 against AFC Bournemouth in the FA Cup first round on 20 November 1971.
The highest recorded attendance at Hartsdown Park was 14,169 for the visit of Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Cup in 1972–73. Margate's all-time appearance record holder is Bob Harrop, who played 564 times. Martin Buglione holds the record for most career goals with 158. Jack Palethorpe holds the record for the most goals scored in a single season, having scored 66 in the 1929–30 season.
## Managers
Margate's first known manager was Arthur Graves, who was installed as manager when Margate Town was reformed in 1929. By far the club's longest-serving manager was Almer Hall, who was manager for twenty years from 1950 until 1970. Several former professional players have managed the club, the most high-profile being the former Welsh international Terry Yorath. The club's current manager is Reede Prestedge, who was appointed in February 2023 after a spell as joint interim manager.
## Current squad
Source:
## Current staff
As of 27 April 2023
## Honours
## Rivalries
Margate's main traditional rivalry is with Thanet neighbours Ramsgate, with whom Margate contest the Thanet derby. Matches between the two teams drew large crowds in the 1960s, but the rivalry has waned in subsequent decades, largely due to the two teams rarely playing in the same league. Another of Margate's rivals is Dover Athletic. Despite similarly meeting rarely in competitive games over recent years, both teams were in the Conference in the 2001–02 season, when the two games between Margate and Dover were watched by a combined total of over 6,000 spectators. The game played at Margate's Hartsdown Park stadium drew a crowd of 3,676, and 2,325 were in attendance for the game at Dover's Crabble stadium.
|
25,875,722 |
Smooth toadfish
| 1,153,732,976 |
Species of fish
|
[
"Fish described in 1813",
"Fish of Victoria (state)",
"Marine fish of Southern Australia",
"Marine fish of Tasmania",
"Tetractenos"
] |
The smooth toadfish (Tetractenos glaber) is a species of fish in the pufferfish family Tetraodontidae. It is native to shallow coastal and estuarine waters of southeastern Australia, where it is widespread and abundant. French naturalist Christophe-Paulin de La Poix de Fréminville described the species in 1813, though early records confused it with its close relative, the common toadfish (T. hamiltonii). The two are the only members of the genus Tetractenos after going through several taxonomic changes since discovery.
Up to 16 cm (6+1⁄4 in) long with distinctive leopard-like dark markings on its dorsal side, the smooth toadfish has a rounded front and tapers to a narrow tail at the back. Unlike most of its relatives, it does not have prominent spines on its body. Like other pufferfish, it can inflate itself with water or air. It forages for its preferred foods—molluscs and crustaceans—in sand and mud of the bottom sediment. Often an unwanted catch by anglers, the smooth toadfish is highly poisonous because of the tetrodotoxin present in its body, and eating it may result in death.
## Taxonomy
French naturalist Christophe-Paulin de La Poix de Fréminville described the smooth toadfish in 1813 as Tetrodon glaber, based on a specimen collected in Adventure Bay in southeastern Tasmania by Claude Riche. This holotype was then catalogued in the collection of French naturalist Alexandre Brongniart, but was subsequently lost; upon his death, Brongniart's collection was bequeathed to the Paris Museum and the specimen did not appear there nor at any other institution. The specific name glaber is from the Latin adjective glăber, meaning "bald". Fréminville's description was overlooked by many subsequent authorities, resulting in the confusion of this species with the closely related common toadfish (Tetractenos hamiltoni); it is unclear with many records which species was being referred to, though those from Victoria and Tasmania belong to this species. This issue in the scientific literature was not fully resolved until 1983.
French naturalist Auguste Duméril erected a new genus in publishing the species as Aphanacanthe reticulatus in 1855 from a description authored by his countryman Gabriel Bibron, who had died suddenly, Later Latinised to Aphanacanthus, it was linked to a presumed type species Tetrodon reticulatus, from a manuscript by Bibron. In 1959, Yseult Le Danois equated this species name to Tetractenos hamiltoni, but New Zealand zoologist Graham Hardy later reviewed the specimens labelled as T. hamiltoni and found that they should be assigned to T. glaber. The genus name Aphanacanthe—not Aphanacanthus, as the original spelling takes priority—would have taken precedence over the current genus name Tetractenos. However, it is a nomen nudum as it does not provide enough detail or information to diagnose or properly describe the species, since Duméril had only written a (French) translation of the genus name—αφανης qui nе parait pas, ἃκανθα, épine ("with no thorns").
British ichthyologist Charles Tate Regan described Spheroides liosomus in 1909 from specimens collected in Melbourne, Hobart, Flinders Island and Port Phillip. He noted its lack of spines compared with specimens of Tetrodon hamiltonii, and hence argued that it was a distinct and separate species. Australian biologist Gilbert Whitley equated Regan's description with Fréminville's original naming and gave it the combination Spheroides glaber in 1955, and later Gastrophysus glaber in 1964.
The smooth toadfish was assigned to the genera Tetrodon (now Tetraodon) and Sphaeroides, both of which became wastebasket taxa. The smooth toadfish was assigned to several other genera after it became clear that it fell outside a more restricted definition of Tetr(a)odon, including Torquigener. Recognising that the smooth and common toadfish were distinct enough from other species to warrant their own genus and that no valid genus name existed, Hardy reassigned the two species to the new genus Tetractenos in 1983.
Common names include smooth toadfish, smooth toado, slimey toadfish or smooth blowie. Along with related toadfish species, the smooth toadfish is known in Australia as a "toadie". Gaguni is a Tharawal name for toadfish in the Sydney region, the word recorded by William Dawes as ca-gone in his 1791 diaries of the Sydney language.
## Description
With a total adult length of anywhere from 3 to 16 cm (1+1⁄8–6+1⁄4 in), the smooth toadfish has an elongate body with a rounded back and flattened belly. The body narrows posteriorly to the slender tail, and its fins are all elongate and rounded. The dorsal fin has 9 to 11 rays. The pectoral fin has 15 to 18 rays, the first of which is very short. It arises well below the level of the eye. The anal fin has 7–9 rays and caudal fin has 11. The smooth toadfish has a small mouth with thin lips at its apex and a tiny chin. The round eyes are adnate (unable to rotate), their upper border is level with the profile of the back and the lower border is well above the mouth. In a slightly depressed area just in front of the eyes are two small nipple-shaped structures (papillae) that are the nasal organs. The openings face to the rear of the fish and are closed by flaps attached to the walls closest to the fish's midline. The first pharyngobranchial gill arch is elongated and narrow with many tiny teeth. The smooth toadfish has tiny spines that are entirely within the skin layer; these run along its back from the nasal organs almost to the dorsal fin, and along its sides from the eye to the pectoral fine, and along its underparts from behind its mouth to its vent. The skin is smooth even when the fish is fully inflated. It swallows water or air via a flap in its throat to swell itself up.
The base colour of the upperparts is pale tan to yellow-green, heavily marked with irregular brown spots in a reticulated pattern, and several broad dark brown bands, including ones between the eyes, between the pectoral fins and at the level of the dorsal fin. Reminiscent of a leopard's spots, the reticulated pattern continues on the upper lateral side along the body of the fish, becoming silver-white on the lower lateral parts. The chin and belly are white. The fins have a faint yellow-orange tinge, more noticeably in the tail fin. Fieldwork in Sydney waters found females to be larger and heavier than males. Smooth toadfish grow steadily larger as they grow older, with one 16 cm (6+1⁄4 in) long individual calculated to be 13 years old from examination of its otoliths. Their gonads develop when they reach a total length of about 7–8 cm (2+3⁄4–3+1⁄8 in). The smooth toadfish can be distinguished from the otherwise similar common toadfish by its lack of spines and its larger- and bolder-patterned markings on its upperparts.
## Distribution and habitat
The smooth toadfish is found along Australia's eastern and southeast coast, from Moreton Bay in southeastern Queensland to Port Lincoln in South Australia as well as Kangaroo Island and Tasmania. It is one of the most abundant fishes in the muddy areas of Port Philip Bay. It generally lives in shallow water less than 3 m (10 ft) deep, often over mudflats in estuaries. In areas of seagrass beds, smooth toadfish are more commonly found in sand areas bordering on the seagrass patches. They are more commonly found in seagrass patches in water less than 1.5 m (5 ft) deep rather than deeper water of 3.5–6 m (11–20 ft). A South Australian field study on wrack and associated fauna found that the smooth toadfish was associated with larger volumes and aggregations containing green algae.
Although its movements are poorly known, tagging patterns indicate that the smooth toadfish spends most of its life cycle and reproduces in estuaries. It can venture well into freshwater past brackish areas. In 1964 a school of toadfish were found in the Lang Lang River at the South Gippsland Highway—34 km (21 mi) from Western Port Bay and well beyond tidal areas.
### Conservation
Its large range, abundance and stable population mean the smooth toadfish is classified as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List. Although no decline in numbers has been recorded, the effects of disappearance of its habitat—mangroves and seagrass beds—is unknown.
## Breeding
The breeding habits of estuary-dwelling pufferfish have been little researched in general. Fieldwork in the Hawkesbury River and tributaries north of Sydney found that the smooth toadfish breeds between April and July, building up fat stores in its liver from February to April beforehand.
## Feeding
The smooth toadfish has strong jaws that readily crush shellfish and crustaceans. It feeds predominantly on benthic (bottom-dwelling) organisms in the substrate of the bodies of water in which it forages. Its diet includes molluscs such as black mussels, pipis, white sunset shells (Soletellina alba) and oysters (Crassostrea), crustaceans such as semaphore crabs and shrimp, and brown algae. The proportions of crustaceans to molluscs can vary widely depending on the abundance of food items; hence in a 1999 field study, the soldier crab (Mictyris longicarpus) predominated in Cowan Creek while the black mussel did so in nearby Berowra Creek. Field experiments showed it was a consumer of oysters and the gastropod Bembicium auratum, and had a major impact on their numbers.
Because it is a common estuarine fish, it has been used in studies of heavy metal contamination in coastal waters. Fish tested around Sydney showed uptake was highest in the gonads, then muscle, gills and liver. It is unclear why metal concentrations were lower in toadfish livers (compared with studies of contamination in other fish) but their liver cells may be more effective at removing these elements. Lead, cadmium and nickel levels corresponded with those in the sediment from which the fish were taken, suggesting dietary intake. The gonads of male fish had twenty times as much arsenic as those of females, while the gills of female fish contained thirty times as much lead as those of males. Raised levels of arsenic, cobalt, cadmium and lead in gills suggested the fish absorbed these from the surrounding water. An experiment exposing smooth toadfish to radioactive cadmium and selenium in either food or water found that cadmium in food was taken up in and excreted by the liver, while cadmium in water was taken up in the gut lining and excreted in liver, gills and kidney, indicating the fish were consuming a lot of water. Selenium was taken up in the gills, kidneys and liver regardless of whether it was in food or water. Fieldwork in Sydney waterways showed that higher arsenic, lead, cadmium and cobalt corresponded with decreased lipid levels in liver and gonadal tissue, and raised cobalt and nickel correspond to increased protein levels in muscle, liver and gonadal tissue. Raised lead levels were consistent with smaller egg size. A study of asymmetry of fish bones in smooth toadfish in various parts of Sydney and Hawkesbury River estuaries showed a relationship between exposure to organochlorine pesticides but not heavy metals, indicating the finding may correlate to stress from organic toxicity.
## Toxicity
Notorious for taking bait from fish hooks, the smooth toadfish is an unwanted catch for anglers as its flesh is highly poisonous and unfit for human consumption. Its lack of spines makes it easier to handle than other toadfish when it inflates itself after being caught. Its toxicity had been reported by local aborigines in Sydney to William Dawes in the late 18th century. A man named John Buff was fatally poisoned after catching and eating toadfish in Duck River in 1821 near Parramatta; his case and subsequent coroner's inquest were published in the Sydney Gazette. The smooth toadfish was responsible for the deaths of the wife and two children of Captain Bell of New Town near Hobart in a widely publicised case in March 1831. Colonial surgeon James Scott wrote,
> "The melancholy and dreadful effect produced by eating it was lately instanced in the neighbourhood of Hobart town ... The poison is of a powerful sedative nature, producing stupor, loss of speech, deglutition, vision and the power of the voluntary muscles, and ultimately an entire deprivation of nervous power and death."
An inquest into the deaths took place on 29 March 1831. The family's three servants, one of whom appeared to have been poisoned as well and was ill, were placed in custody separately to stop them communicating with each other while the investigation proceeded. The jury replicated the effects by feeding the fish to (and poisoning) two cats. The jury learnt that the servant, Speed, had caught the 20 or so fish and taken them home to eat. A neighbour called out to him not to eat the fish as they were "no good", but he took it as a joke. The inquest concluded with a finding of accidental death, with some deliberation over whether Speed should have been charged with manslaughter or even murder after hearing the warning. Warnings about toadfish were subsequently issued.
Its toxicity is due to tetrodotoxin, which is concentrated particularly in the liver, ovaries, intestines and skin. Many species of pufferfish bear this toxin, obtaining it from tetrodotoxin-containing bacteria in their diet. Eating the fish can have fatal consequences. The symptoms of poisoning, which are predominantly neurological, include ataxia, in addition to numbness and/or paraesthesia (tingling) around the mouth, lips, and limb extremities. Cases of pets being poisoned have occurred when the fish have been left where they can eat them.
|
41,747,978 |
Tjioeng Wanara
| 1,097,315,478 |
1941 film
|
[
"1941 films",
"Dutch East Indies films",
"Films based on Indonesian myths and legends",
"Films set in Indonesia",
"Indonesian black-and-white films",
"Lost Indonesian films"
] |
Tjioeng Wanara (; Perfected Spelling: Ciung Wanara) is a 1941 film from the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia) directed and produced by Jo Eng Sek. Starring R Sukran, Elly Joenara and AB Djoenaedi, it featured more than 500 people in supporting roles. The film follows a young prince named Tjioeng Wanara who must reclaim his throne from the cruel King of Galuh; it is adapted from the Sundanese legend of the same name.
The second production by Star Film, Tjioeng Wanara was released 18 August 1941. It was advertised heavily, emphasising the fact that the scholar Poerbatjaraka had served as the historical adviser and that the film was based on Balai Pustaka's version of the legend. It premiered to commercial success, but received mixed reviews. This black-and-white production, which was screened until at least 1948, is now thought lost.
## Plot
In 1255 Saka, Permana Dikoesoemah is the King of Galuh, beloved by his people and his wife Naganingroem. The minister Aria Kebonan wants power for himself, and persuades the king to surrender the crown to him. Permana Dikoesoemah warns Aria Kebonan to respect him always and not to bother his wife. He then abdicates to meditate, ultimately ascending to a higher plane of existence. Aria Kebonan, meanwhile, magically gains the king's appearance, ensuring that the people of Galuh are unaware that they have a new king.
Aria Kebonan proves to be an unpopular ruler. One day, he hears that both Naganingroem and the king's former concubine, Dewi Pangrenjep, are pregnant. With Dewi Pangrenjep, Aria Kebonan plans to eliminate Naganingroem's son. During childbirth the son is replaced with a dog, while Dewi Pangrenjep takes the newborn and throws him into a river. He is later found and rescued by farmers, who name him Tjioeng Wanara. Dewi Pangrenjep, meanwhile, gives birth to a son, Aria Banga.
Years pass, and Tjioeng Wanara grows to be a strong young man. Aria Banga, meanwhile, has taken over the throne and rules with an iron fist, hated and feared by his people. Tjioeng Wanara returns to Galuh and overthrows the king, arresting Aria Kebonan and Dewi Pangrenjep; Aria Banga, however, is able to escape and establish the kingdom of Majapahit. Tjioeng Wanara rules kindly over his people and later moves his capital to Pajajaran.
## Production
Tjioeng Wanara was directed and produced by Jo Eng Sek for Star Film. It was the second production by both Jo and the company, following Pah Wongso Pendekar Boediman in 1941. Poerbatjaraka, a scholar of traditional literature, served as the historical adviser to the production. Cinematography for the black-and-white film was handled by Chok Chin Hsien. By June 1941 production was almost complete.
The film starred R Sukran, Elly Joenara, AB Djoenaedi, Muhamad Arief, and S Waldy. Waldy had made his film debut in 1940's Zoebaida for Oriental Film Company, later joining Star for Pah Wongso; Joenara and Arief had begun their cinema careers in the latter film. Tjioeng Wanara featured the first on-screen performances by Djoenaedi and Sukran. The stars were supported by over 500 extras and actors in bit parts. As such, JB Kristanto's Katalog Film Indonesia records the production as the first "colossal" film in the Indies, in terms of scale.
Tjioeng Wanara was based on a Sundanese legend of the same name, retold by M. A. Salmoen in a 1938 Balai Pustaka-published edition which was then adapted by Rd Ariffien; as such, a review in the Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad found that the film contained little of the original tale except for the characters' names. The film featured traditional arts such as the Serimpi dance.
## Release and reception
Though initially slated for a July 1941 release, Tjioeng Wanara ultimately premiered at the Orion Theatre in Batavia (now Jakarta) on 18 August 1941. It was publicised extensively, often emphasising the role of Poerbatjaraka and using the name of Balai Pustaka, the official publishing house of the Dutch East Indies government known for its printed versions of traditional tales, in advertisements. The film was rated for all ages.
The premiere of Tjioeng Wanara was shown to a packed theatre. Reception of the film, however, was mixed. An anonymous review in the Soerabaijasch Handelsblad was positive, considering the film to be successful in its adaptation of the legend, while another, in the same newspaper, recommended it. Indonesian film historian Misbach Yusa Biran, however, writes that some viewers considered the film "nothing more than a stage play brought to the silver screen".
## Legacy
Star made four further films before it was closed in 1942, when the Japanese occupied the Indies; Jo Eng Sek did not direct again. After writing Tjioeng Wanara, Ariffien left Star Film to work at a circus; Biran writes that he was disappointed over the work's poor reception. Joenara, Arief, and Waldy remained in the film industry; Joenara went on to be a producer, while Arief and Waldy later took up directing. Neither Djoenaedi nor Sukran are recorded as making another film.
Tjioeng Wanara was screened as late as June 1948, though it is now likely lost. All movies were then shot using flammable nitrate film, and after a fire destroyed much of Produksi Film Negara's warehouse in 1952, old films shot on nitrate were deliberately destroyed. As such, American visual anthropologist Karl G. Heider suggests that all Indonesian films from before 1950 are lost. However, Kristanto records several as having survived at Sinematek Indonesia's archives, and Biran writes that several Japanese propaganda films have survived at the Netherlands Government Information Service.
## Explanatory notes
|
3,042,989 |
Banksia cuneata
| 1,136,864,071 |
Endangered species of flowering plant
|
[
"Banksia taxa by scientific name",
"Endangered flora of Australia",
"Eudicots of Western Australia",
"Plants described in 1981"
] |
Banksia cuneata, commonly known as matchstick banksia or Quairading banksia, is an endangered species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae. Endemic to southwest Western Australia, it belongs to Banksia subg. Isostylis, a sub-genus of three closely related Banksia species with inflorescences or flower clusters that are dome-shaped heads rather than characteristic Banksia flower spikes. A shrub or small tree up to 5 m (16 ft) high, it has prickly foliage and pink and cream flowers. The common name Matchstick Banksia arises from the blooms in late bud, the individual buds of which resemble matchsticks. The species is pollinated by honeyeaters (Meliphagidae).
Although B. cuneata was first collected before 1880, it was not until 1981 that Australian botanist Alex George formally described and named the species. There are two genetically distinct population groups, but no recognised varieties. This Banksia is classified as endangered, surviving in fragments of remnant bushland in a region which has been 93% cleared for agriculture. As Banksia cuneata is killed by fire and regenerates from seed, it is highly sensitive to bushfire frequency—fires recurring within four years could wipe out populations of plants not yet mature enough to set seed. Banksia cuneata is rarely cultivated, and its prickly foliage limits its utility in the cut flower industry.
## Description
Banksia cuneata grows as a shrub or small tree up to 5 m (16 ft) high, without a lignotuber. It has one or more main trunks with smooth grey bark, and many branches. Young stems are covered in coarse hairs, but these are lost as the stems age. The leaves are wedge-shaped with serrated edges, having from one to five teeth along each side. They range from 1 to 4 cm (0.5 to 1.5 in) long and 0.5 to 1.5 cm (0.20 to 0.59 in) wide, on a petiole of 2 to 3 mm. The upper surface is dull green; as with the stems, both leaf surfaces are covered in coarse hairs when young, but these are soon lost.
Flowers occur in dome-shaped heads from three to four cm (1.2–1.6 in) in diameter, growing at the ends of branches. They comprise 55 to 65 individual flowers, enclosed at the base by a whorl of short involucral bracts. As with most other Proteaceae, each flower consists of a perianth comprising four united tepals, and a single pistil, the style of which is initially enclosed within the limb of the perianth, but breaks free at anthesis. In B. cuneata, the perianth is about 2.5 cm (0.98 in) long, with a limb of about 0.4 cm (0.16 in). Prior to anthesis, the long thin perianth topped by a prominent limb resembles a matchstick, which explains one common name for this species. At first, the perianth is mostly cream, being pink only near its base; it later becomes pink throughout. The style is initially cream, but turns red; the pollen presenter is green.
Old flowers soon fall from the flower heads (often called cones at this stage), revealing a woody base which may have up to five follicles embedded in it. These are a mottled grey colour, smooth, felted with short fine hairs, and measure from 1 to 1.3 cm (0.39 to 0.51 in) high, 1.7 to 2.1 cm (0.67 to 0.83 in) along the seam, and 0.9 to 1.2 cm (0.35 to 0.47 in) across the seam. Each follicle contains up to two seeds; these are roughly triangular in shape, with a large papery wing.
Banksia cuneata is most easily distinguished from the other two species in B. subg. Isostylis by its brighter flowers and duller leaves. It further differs from B. ilicifolia in its smaller habit; its smooth bark; its smaller leaves, flowers and fruit; and in its sequence of flower colour changes. The leaves, flowers and fruit of B. oligantha are smaller still, and its foliage is not as prickly as that of B. cuneata.
## Taxonomy
### Discovery and naming
The earliest known specimen collection of B. cuneata was made by Julia Wells some time before 1880. What would later become the type specimen for the species was collected by Western Australian botanist and Banksia expert Alex George on 20 November 1971, from Badjaling Nature Reserve, about 8 km (5.0 mi) east of Quairading, at . The species was finally published by George nearly a decade later, in his 1981 monograph "The genus Banksia L.f. (Proteaceae)". The specific epithet is from the Latin cuneatus ("wedge-shaped"), in reference to the shape of the leaves.
The species has an uneventful nomenclatural history: it has no synonyms, and no subspecies or varieties have been published. It bears the common names of Matchstick Banksia or Quairading Banksia.
### Infrageneric placement
George placed B. cuneata in subgenus Isostylis because of its dome-shaped flower heads. A 1996 cladistic analysis of the genus by botanists Kevin Thiele and Pauline Ladiges yielded no information about the circumscription of B. subg. Isostylis, nor of the relationships within it, so George's placement of this species was retained in their arrangement. That arrangement was not accepted by George, and was largely discarded by him in his 1999 arrangement. The placement of B. cuneata there was unaffected, and can be summarised as follows:
Banksia
: B. subg. Banksia (3 sections, 11 series, 73 species, 11 subspecies, 14 varieties)
: B. subg. Isostylis
: : B. ilicifolia
: : B. oligantha
: : B. cuneata
Since 1998, American botanist Austin Mast and co-authors have been publishing results of ongoing cladistic analyses of DNA sequence data for the subtribe Banksiinae, which then comprised genera Banksia and Dryandra. Their analyses suggest a phylogeny that differs greatly from George's taxonomic arrangement. Banksia cuneata resolves as the next closest relative, or "sister", to a clade containing B. ilicifolia and B. oligantha, suggesting a monophyletic B. subg. Isostylis; but the clade appears fairly derived (that it, it evolved relatively recently), suggesting that B. subg. Isostylis may not merit subgeneric rank.
Early in 2007, Mast and Thiele rearranged the genus Banksia by merging Dryandra into it, and published B. subg. Spathulatae for the taxa having spoon-shaped cotyledons; thus B. subg. Banksia was redefined as encompassing taxa lacking 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. cuneata is placed in B. subg. Banksia.
### Phylogeny
Relationships between B. cuneata and the other members of B. subg. Isostylis still remain unclear. Though Mast's studies found B. cuneata to be the most basal of the three species, a 2004 study of genetic divergence within the subgenus yielded both other possibilities: some analyses suggested B. ilicifolia as basal, while others suggested B. oligantha. Further complicating the situation is the southernmost population of B. cuneata, which has both genetic and phenetic affinities with B. oligantha located to the southeast. The origin of this population is unknown. It might have arisen through hybridisation, or it may be a transitional or even ancestral form. Finally, biogeographical factors suggest that B. ilicifolia would be the most basal of the three species: it occurs in the High Rainfall Zone where relictual species are most common, whereas the others are restricted to the Transitional Rainfall Zone, where more recently evolved species are most common.
## Distribution and habitat
An endangered species, B. cuneata occurs only over a 90 km (56 mi) range around Pingelly and Quairading, in Western Australia. It favours deep yellow sand at elevations between 230 and 300 m (750 and 980 ft), in woodland habitat. It often grows in association with Banksia prionotes and Xylomelum angustifolium.
Reports on the number of populations and individuals vary widely. A survey in 1982 reported 450 plants in five populations, with the largest population comprising 300 plants. In 1988, however, only four populations comprising 300 plants were found; surprisingly, only fifty plants could be found in the location where a population of 300 had previously been reported; yet there were no dead plants, and no evidence of disturbance. Since then the number of populations reported have ranged from 6 to 11, and reports of the total number of plants have ranged from 340 to 580.
## Life cycle and ecology
Pollinated primarily by honeyeaters, the inflorescences appear from September to December. Prominent flowers, a red or pink colour, a straight style and a tubular perianth are features thought to promote pollination by birds. The structure of B. cuneata's flower, with the style end functioning as a pollen presenter, suggests that autogamous self-fertilisation must be common. This is countered, however, by protandry: pollen is released well before the pistil becomes receptive; usually by the time the pistil becomes receptive most of the pollen has either been transferred, or has lost its viability. This strategy is effective against individual flowers fertilising themselves, but does nothing to prevent geitonogamy: fertilisation of flowers by different flowers on the same plant. Because of the way flowers are clustered together in heads, this must be quite common, although whether it results in successful fruit set is another matter: isozyme studies have observed "intense selection against homozygotes", a fairly common outbreeding strategy in plants that set much seed.
Assessments of the mating system of this species have found that outcrossing rates vary between populations. Populations in relatively intact bushland have high outcrossing rates, but those in more disturbed environments are both more inbred on average, and more variable. This has been attributed to a range of causes. Firstly, the higher density of disturbed populations leads to greater rates of mating between neighbouring plants, resulting in more genetic structure and thus more effective selfing. Secondly, disturbed populations usually lack an understorey, and so cannot support a resident population of honeyeaters; instead, they rely upon occasional visitors for pollination. The greatly reduced pollination rates means fewer outcrossing fertilisations on average, leading to less selection against inbred fertilisations; and the sporadic presence of pollinators leads to outcrossing variability.
No seed is set when pollinators are excluded, indicating that seed set must be pollinator-limited. About 96% of fertilized follicles mature, and about 82% of seeds mature. These are very high numbers for Banksia, indicating that there are no problems with nutrient supply. This species produces an unusually high number of old flowerheads, or cones, per plant—typically more than 500. However, there are an unusually low number of follicles per cone—often only one. Thus the number of follicles per plant ends up roughly average for a Banksia species.
Banksia cuneata lacks a lignotuber, so plants are killed by bushfire. However, this species is strongly serotinous: seed is released only following a fire. Thus plants accumulate an aerial seed bank in fire intervals, which is released all at once after a fire, ensuring population regeneration. The mechanism is a resin that seals the follicles shut, preventing dehiscence; the heat of a bushfire melts the resin, and the follicles open. Intense fires cause the immediate release of the seed and seed separator, but after cooler fires the seed separator often remains in place, blocking the follicle exit and preventing seed release. The wings on the seed separator are hygroscopic; they draw together when moistened, then reflex out again as they dry. Thus they lever themselves, and the seeds, out of the follicle over the course of one or more wet-dry cycles, ensuring that seed is released only after rain has fallen. The juvenile period for B. cuneata is around four years. Populations are very vulnerable to fire during this period, as fire will wipe out the entire population and there will be no seed from which it might recover. A model-based investigation found that the optimal fire interval for maximising population size over the medium term is around 15 years. More frequent fires reduce population size by killing adults before they have reached their full fecundity. Less frequent fires reduce population size because there are fewer opportunities for seed dispersal and germination. However, the optimal fire interval for minimising the risk of extinct in the long term is probably much longer.
B. cuneata is very unusual in apparently suffering no seed loss due to granivory. In nearly all other species, burrowing insect larvae eat a large proportion of seeds, and birds cause further losses in breaking open cones in search of larvae to eat. The seed-eating insects are mostly species-specific, and it appears that no insect species has adapted to B. cuneata. Possible reasons for this are the very low seed counts, and the rarity of the species, both of which offer little incentive for adaptation to the species. There is also no evidence of granivores feeding on seed after it has fallen. As a result, this species has the highest rate of seed viability recorded for a Banksia species: in one study, 74% of all seed produced in the previous 12 years was viable. This was largely accounted for by seed under 9 years old, about 90% of which is viable. After the ninth year, viability is lost rapidly as the follicles decay and senescence sets in. Seed production itself starts very slowly. On average, plants aged between 5 and 12 years have about 18 seeds stored in their canopy. Storage increases exponentially, however, and 25-year-old plants often have tens of thousands of seeds. Seed production probably never plateaus. In fact, by the time a plant is twenty years old it has accumulated such a great weight of cones that major branches begin to break away; and by the age of thirty, plants have broken branches more often than not. As plants age, branch breakage increasingly leads to plant death, and it is unlikely that any plants live to more than 45 years.
The high seed maturation and viability rates are offset, however, by an extremely low seedling survival rate. This is almost solely due to moisture stress. In one study, an estimated 17,100 viable seeds were released following an experimental fire. Fewer than 5% of them germinated, and only eleven plants survived the first summer drought. The last plants to die were in depressions, in shaded areas or amongst leaf litter; and the eleven survivors were all on road shoulders, where they benefited from road runoff and a 3 cm (1 in) thick mulch of pisolitic laterite. The inevitable conclusion is that seedling survival is primarily determined by water availability.
## Conservation
Banksia cuneata was declared critically endangered after a 1982 survey found only five populations comprising about 450 plants. The largest population, consisting of around 300 plants, was on a conservation reserve, but all others were on road verges, and contained only 50–70 plants each. However, since then more plants have been located, and populations have been found to be gradually increasing in response to a number of conservation measures including fencing and baiting of rabbits. In recognition of its slight recovery, it is now considered endangered but no longer critically so.
In April 1987, Western Australia's Department of Environment and Conservation burnt part of one population in an experimental regeneration fire. The mature plants were killed, and the seedlings that volunteered did not survive the summer drought. A Matchstick Banksia Recovery Team was established in 1995, and over time they succeeded in establishing a large number of seedlings. A large adult population was destroyed by bushfire in 1996, causing further concern, but this was followed by the recruitment of large numbers of seedlings.
Threats to B. cuneata include land clearing, which leads to direct plant loss and population fragmentation, grazing pressure, competition from exotic weeds, changes to the fire regime, and encroaching salinity. The Banksia Atlas survey found one population to be on the side of a road; the plants were aging with no new seedlings noted, and the site was weed-infested. A large part of the surviving populations are on private land, and depend on good relationships with local landowners. Many have obliged by fencing off areas and restricting entry of rabbits. There has been some attempt by CALM to translocate populations away from hazardous areas; these have met with some success, helped with watering in the first year.
### Land clearing
Even before the extensive clearing of the Wheatbelt in the 1930s, B. cuneata must have had a highly fragmented distribution, since the deep yellow sand favoured by the species occurs only in patches, and makes up only 10 to 15% of the area. Around 93% of the land has now been cleared of native vegetation, with the remaining 7% occurring in remnants of various sizes. Thus land clearing must have further fragmented an already fragmented population, as well as greatly reduced the number of individual plants.
### Protection of genetic diversity
Levels of genetic diversity within individual populations of B. cuneata are unusually high for a rare and endangered species, but the populations fall into two genetically distinct groups. These are separated not by geographical distance but by the Salt River, an ephemeral saline river system that provides a habitat unsuitable for both B. cuneata and the birds that pollinate it. It thus functions as a barrier to the exchange of genetic material, allowing populations on different sides of the river to diverge through genetic drift. The implication for conservation is that effort should be invested on both sides of the river in order to conserve as much genetic diversity as possible. It was suggested that one large population from each population group would probably be adequate. More recently, however, a model-based risk analysis found that the population size required to reduce extinction risk to acceptable levels is more than ten times the current population size. This leads to the conclusion that all populations, and all available habitat, should be protected.
### Disease
Phytophthora cinnamomi dieback has not been identified as a threat to this species, but testing has found it to be highly susceptible; in one study it exhibited the highest susceptibility of 49 Banksia species studied, with 80% of plants dead within 96 days of inoculation with the disease, and 100% dead within a year.
### Climate change
The survival of this species is tied closely to rainfall because of the susceptibility of seedlings to drought. It is thus especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. This was recognised as early as 1992, when it was noted that winter rainfall in the Quairading region had been falling by about 4% per decade, and that a continuation of this trend may reduce the species' distribution. Recently, a more thorough assessment of the potential impact of climate change on this species found that severe change is likely to lead to extinction, and mild change to a reduction of its range by 80% by 2080. However, there may not be any range reduction at all under mid-severity climate change, depending on how effectively this species can migrate into newly habitable areas.
## Uses and cultural references
Propagation is by seed, although these are hard to obtain. Seeds do not require any treatment before sowing, and take around 23 days to germinate. Cuttings yield unpredictable results. The plant itself prefers a deep, sandy, well-drained soil with a pH of 6.0–7.0. It requires full sun, but some protection from the wind is recommended, as this is a fast-growing plant with spindly branches that are easily damaged by wind. A more compact form can be obtained by pruning the top quarter each year. This species has little appeal to the cut flower industry because of its prickly foliage, and its tendency to drip nectar.
Ironically, given its conservation status, Kingsley Dixon of Kings Park and Botanic Garden suggested that it may have weed potential: the species was trialled as a cut flower crop on land north of Moore River, and seedlings were noted afterwards.
Banksia cuneata has been adopted as the floral emblem of the Shire of Quairading, and has been incorporated into the shire logo. There is a park named Cuneata Park in the town of Quairading.
|
27,789,555 |
Manon Melis
| 1,171,961,377 |
Dutch football manager and former footballer
|
[
"1986 births",
"2015 FIFA Women's World Cup players",
"BK Häcken FF players",
"Be Quick '28 players",
"Damallsvenskan players",
"Dutch expatriate sportspeople in Sweden",
"Dutch expatriate sportspeople in the United States",
"Dutch expatriate women's footballers",
"Dutch women's footballers",
"Expatriate women's footballers in Sweden",
"Expatriate women's soccer players in the United States",
"FC Rosengård players",
"FIFA Women's Century Club",
"Footballers from Rotterdam",
"Linköpings FC players",
"Living people",
"National Women's Soccer League players",
"Netherlands women's international footballers",
"OL Reign players",
"Women's association football forwards"
] |
Gabriëlla Maria "Manon" Melis (; born 31 August 1986) is a Dutch manager of women's football development at Feyenoord and a former professional footballer who played as a forward. She spent most of her professional career playing in the Swedish league Damallsvenskan, which she won three times with her club LdB FC Malmö, in 2010, 2011, and 2013. Melis also won the Swedish Supercup with Malmö in 2011, and was briefly with the Swedish teams Linköping and Göteborg. She was the Damallsvenskan top scorer three times, in 2008, 2010, and 2011. In 2016, she moved to the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) in the US, playing for Seattle Reign for one season, before retiring from professional football.
At age 17, Melis made her debut for the Netherlands national team in 2004. Her scoring helped the Dutch qualify for their first major tournament, the UEFA Women's Euro 2009, where they reached the semi-finals. In the tournament, she scored a crucial goal in the final group game against Denmark to send her team into the knockout stage. At Euro 2013 in Sweden and the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup in Canada, she played all seven combined matches for her country but did not score. When she retired from playing international football in 2016, she had earned 136 caps and scored 59 goals. She was the all-time top goal scorer for the Netherlands national team from 2010 to 2019.
Melis has been the manager of women's football development at Feyenoord since 2017 with the aim to create a first team that competes in the Dutch Eredivisie and is supported by youth and reserve teams. She achieved this goal when Feyenoord Women fielded a team in the Eredivisie for the first time in the 2021–22 season. Her father is former Feyenoord player Harry Melis.
## Early life
Gabriëlla Maria Melis, given name Manon, was born on 31 August 1986 in Rotterdam. Her father is Harry Melis, a former footballer who played as a winger in the Dutch Eredivisie for Feyenoord, ADO Den Haag, and DS'79. At a young age, she expressed her desire to follow in his example. She started playing organised football in 1993 for RVVH in Ridderkerk, where she initially played in the girls' team. The Royal Dutch Football Association soon suggested that Melis play with and against boys, a scheme the association had introduced in 1986. She enjoyed the more challenging environment up to the highest youth teams. Girls playing football was still somewhat unusual at the time and she later said that her direct opponents were often ridiculed by their teammates for having to compete against a girl. Melis later said that most of her teammates on the senior national team had played on boys' teams in their youth.
During her childhood, Melis appeared as a ball girl during a national team match at the Sparta Stadion Het Kasteel. She supported Feyenoord, one of her father's clubs, from an early age and has said that Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Henrik Larsson were her favourite players during her youth.
## Club career
### 2004–2006: RVVH
After turning 18 in 2004, Melis moved to the senior level. She continued to play for RVVH but was no longer allowed to play on mixed teams and had to switch to the club's women's team. She was joined by Leonne Stentler, who had also played for RVVH's mixed youth teams. Stentler, who went on to earn 16 caps for the Dutch national team, later said that the drop in level had negatively affected their motivation. Other internationals at the club were Jeanine van Dalen and Sandra Muller. For two seasons she played in the Hoofdklasse, the Netherlands' highest amateur league of women's football. There was no professional league in the Netherlands at the time. The women had to arrange their own travel to away games; unlike for the men, the club did not organise transport for them. RVVH did not win the league during Melis's tenure.
### 2006–2007: Be Quick '28
In 2006, Melis received an offer to play in the German Frauen-Bundesliga, for Duisburg, but declined. She wished to focus fully on football, but this offer meant that she would also have to find other work, which seemed daunting because she was unable to speak German fluently. She decided to stay in the highest Dutch league and accept an offer from Be Quick '28 in Zwolle, because of their more intensive training regime. She joined Sylvia Smit, with whom she had played on the national team, in attack. Melis only played for Be Quick for a few months.
### 2007–2011: LdB FC Malmö
In January 2007, at age 20, Melis moved abroad to play professionally for LdB FC Malmö in the Swedish Damallsvenskan. She later recalled that the women's game was far more advanced in Sweden than in the Netherlands, both in terms of professionalism, exemplified by the frequency and intensity of training, and media coverage. Malmö had finished in fourth place in the twelve-team league the previous season and signed her to challenge defending champions Umeå IK. Among the other players on the team were Ásthildur Helgadóttir, an Iceland international, and Caroline Jönsson, Sweden's goalkeeper. In Melis's first home game, against Örebro in front of 1,013 spectators, she scored twice. In her first season she scored ten goals, and finished as the club's top scorer, ahead of Helgadóttir, but her tally was surpassed by Lotta Schelin of Kopparbergs/Göteborg FC who scored 26. Malmö finished third as Umeå retained the championship.
In her second season at Malmö, Melis scored the first equalising goal in a 2–2 draw with Umeå, who ended up winning the league again, their fourth consecutive title. Malmö finished the season third, but having closed the gap with Umeå they had in Melis's first season. Melis, playing in the number 14 jersey, was the league's joint-top-scorer that season with Umeå's Marta, each of them scoring 23 times, although 6 of Marta's goals were scored on the last day of the season in an 11–1 win over already-relegated Bälinge. In November 2008, Melis was nominated for the Forward of the Year award at the annual Swedish Football Gala but she lost to Marta.
In the 2009 season Melis played 20 games, scoring 10 goals. She shared the club's top scorer spot with Frida Nordin. Early in the season Malmö scored seven goals three games in a row, with Melis scoring a hat-trick in one of them, against Piteå. They finished the season in fourth place, as Linköping took the title.
In Melis's fourth season at Malmö the club won the league, thus securing a place in the 2011–12 UEFA Women's Champions League. She surpassed her 2008 goal tally of 23 by scoring 25 goals in 22 games and was the 2010 Damallsvenskan top scorer. Malmö finished 11 points ahead of the second-place team Göteborg. Melis scored hat-tricks in two matches: in the 5–3 victory over Göteborg early in the season, and in the 4–0 away win over Umeå in June. She also scored the opening goal in a 2–1 win over defending champions Linköping. In the final game of the season Melis scored twice in a 5–0 victory over Umeå. In November 2010, Melis won the awards for Forward of the Year and Most Valuable Player in the Damallsvenskan. In their description of the history of Damallsvenskan, the Swedish Football Association wrote that the 2010 season saw some stars leaving the league and, consequently, audience numbers declined, prompting a decrease in sponsor funds needed to attract new stars.
In her first Supercup, held just prior to the start of the 2011 Damallsvenskan season between league champions Malmö and cup winners Örebro, Melis scored the winning goal in extra time. It was a simple tap-in goal after a Sarah Storck shot rebounded off the crossbar. This Supercup win was followed by Melis being part of Malmö successfully defending their title. With three games to play Melis scored the winning goal in a 2–1 victory over Kristianstad, keeping Malmö close to league leaders Tyresö and rivals Göteborg and Umeå. Tyresö lost their last two games, whereas Malmö won both, staying ahead of Göteborg by one point. In the domestic cup, Malmö again lost in the quarter-finals. Despite Melis's opening goal putting Malmö in the lead before half-time, Linköping came from behind to win 2–1. Melis finished the season as Damallsvenskan's top scorer, with 16 goals from 21 games, sharing the honour with Kristianstad's Margrét Lára Viðarsdóttir. She has been Malmö's top scorer for five straight seasons. Melis played her first ever Champions League game on 29 September 2011 in Italy against Tavagnacco, losing 2–1 in the first leg of a two-legged tie. In the return game she scored twice to help secure a 5–0 win and progress to the next round, where they faced SV Neulengbach from Austria. Melis scored once in the away game, helping her club to a 3–1 win. The return match, on 10 November 2011, was her last game with the club. Melis scored the only goal of the match. As a result, Malmö progressed to the quarter-finals, scheduled for March 2012 after Melis left the team.
### 2011–2012: Sky Blue FC
In November 2011, Melis announced she was moving from Malmö to Sky Blue FC, based in Harrison, New Jersey, to play in the American Women's Professional Soccer (WPS) league. Sky Blue FC head coach Jim Gabarra said that because the WPS defences were quick and physical he needed a fast forward player like Melis. Daphne Koster, with whom Melis played for the Dutch national team, played for Sky Blue the year before. Before Melis could start her first game for Sky Blue, the WPS suspended operations in January 2012 because of a legal dispute with an ousted owner. This left many players, including Melis, in need of a new club.
### 2012: Linköpings FC
In February 2012, Melis returned to the Damallsvenskan and signed with Linköping, ahead of the 2012 season starting in April. Coach Jörgen Petersson called her "a strong addition to an already very interesting player squad". Her colleague in attack was the Australian Lisa De Vanna. Reflecting on her years of experience in the Swedish league Melis said, "I think the league is more equal and harder than previous years. There are so many internationals and good players in the league." She was assigned the number 9 jersey. The club did not start the season well, winning two of the first eight games, but she scored all four of her side's goals in their 4–1 victory over Piteå. She also scored four times in Linköping's 11–0 defeat of Djurgården. In June she faced her old club Malmö at the Malmö IP stadium, where she scored the game's opening goal in a 2–1 defeat. In August, she scored once in the home match against Malmö, who won 5–3, with their German international Anja Mittag scoring a hat-trick. Linköping finished third in the league, 16 points behind title-winners Tyresö. Melis scored 16 goals in 21 games, finishing third on the top scorers list behind Mittag and Göteborg's Christen Press.
### 2013: LdB FC Malmö
Melis agreed to return to Malmö in December 2012 for the 2013 Damallsvenskan season, regaining her number 14 jersey and joining Mittag in attack. In the home game against her former club, Linköping, Melis scored the second goal of a 4–0 victory, on an assist from Sara Björk Gunnarsdóttir. The away match at defending champions Tyresö was a turning point for the club's season. Although Malmö were behind 2–1, and had a player sent off with about 20 minutes to go, they achieved a 3–2 win. In her last home game at the Malmö IP stadium, against old rivals Umeå, Melis scored the opening goal in front of more than 2,500 spectators; Malmö won 2–0. Melis collected her third Damallsvenskan winner's medal, as her team finished seven points ahead of second-placed Tyresö. She scored 11 goals in 21 league matches, two goals fewer than her teammate Mittag and twelve fewer than the league's top scorer, Press.
### 2014–2015: Kopparbergs/Göteborg FC
Although Melis wanted to stay at Malmö, when Göteborg in November 2013 came in with an offer she decided to accept it for financial reasons. Göteborg had seen several key players depart, notably midfielders Yael Averbuch, Marie Hammarström, Anita Asante and Johanna Almgren, and needed to invest in players to compete for the title again. The club's subsequent signings included Dutch internationals Lieke Martens and Loes Geurts. Göteborg started the 2014 Damallsvenskan season with a 5–0 away win over Vittsjö GIK; Melis scored a hat-trick, including two goals on assists from long-term Göteborg player Sara Lindén. Coach Stefan Rehn said that the team benefitted from Melis and Martens's many years of experience together on the Netherlands national team. In the 4–0 win over Jitex BK in July 2014, Melis scored all four goals in the first 20 minutes. In the penultimate game of the season, with Rosengård (Malmö's new name after merging with FC Rosengård 1917) already title winners, Göteborg lost second place to Örebro as a result of a 3–2 defeat at Kristianstad, despite Melis scoring twice. Melis ended the season in second place on the top scorers' list with 16 goals, behind Mittag, who scored 23. The two foreigners shared the honours for most assists in the season with 11.
In Melis's final season in Sweden, the 2015 Damallsvenskan, Göteborg achieved a sixth-place finish, as her former club Rosengård won the title again. In October 2015, she played her last match in Sweden, a home game against Örebro, with 373 spectators. The club's fourth Dutch international, Daniëlle van de Donk, opened the scoring early on with an assist by Melis, but the away team won the game 4–2. Melis ranked sixth on the top scorers list, scoring 9 goals, more than any of her teammates; leader Gaëlle Enganamouit of Eskilstuna scored 18. At the end of the season, she considered retirement from professional football.
### 2016: Seattle Reign FC
In November 2015, Melis signed a one-year contract with Seattle Reign FC in the American National Women's Soccer League for the 2016 season, and was assigned the number 14 jersey, stating that it was a dream come true to play in the US. Of her signing, Seattle's head coach Laura Harvey said, "Manon is a fantastic talent who will bring something new to our attack next season. We're thrilled to have a player with her experience and consistent record of success at the highest levels of club and international football join our club next season." Melis was surprised at the popularity of women's football in the US, exemplified by how her teammate Hope Solo had to travel wearing a hoodie and sunglasses to avoid attention. Seattle's season started with a defeat to Melis's former club Sky Blue, ending their streak of 24 undefeated home games, in front of a crowd of 4,000. In the next game, away at Boston Breakers, she scored her first goal in the US, in a 3–0 win. In May, in a game against Portland Thorns FC, she fractured her tibia after a bad landing on the pitch. She joined Rapinoe and Jess Fishlock on Seattle's injury list and missed the following four games. Coming back from injury she scored five goals in five matches. On 25 September 2016, she played the last game of her career, in front of over 5,500 people and scored in the 60th minute to help Seattle to a 3–2 away win over Houston Dash. Seattle finished the season in fifth place, narrowly missing out on a spot in the play-offs. In 16 appearances she scored seven times and was the club's leading scorer that season. In November 2016, Melis announced her retirement from professional football.
## International career
### Debut and early years: 2003–2009
Melis represented the Netherlands at the youth levels, making her debut in the under-17 team in May 2001 and in the Under-19 team in January 2003. In a combined total of 30 games she scored 16 goals for the youth teams. She played her first match for the senior Netherlands women's national football team on 25 April 2004, aged 17, in an away game against Belgium. The Dutch were in the middle of UEFA Women's Euro 2005 qualifying, a double round-robin tournament with four groups. Melis came on at half-time and scored the Netherlands' second goal in a 3–0 win. In the next qualification match, at home against Norway in front of 2,000 fans, she again came on as a substitute, playing for the last three minutes. The Dutch finished qualifying in fourth out of five teams as Denmark and Norway were the only teams to qualify from their group. She appeared in the starting line-up for the first time in her 4th cap, a friendly against England. Only in her 16th cap did she score again, in a friendly in preparation for the 2007 World Cup qualifiers. She did not score in any of the qualifiers and the Dutch again did not qualify, which consequently meant they would not participate in the 2008 Olympics either. Not until almost three years after her debut, in her 34th cap, did she score her third goal for her country, in a 2–0 home win over Italy.
In qualification for the UEFA Women's Euro 2009 the Dutch were drawn in the same group as reigning World Cup champions Germany. The Germans won all eight of their qualifier matches, leaving the Dutch to vie with the Swiss and Belgians for a spot in the play-offs. Melis scored in six of the eight matches, only failing to score against the world champions. In the final qualification game, she scored twice in a 3–0 win over Belgium to ensure the Dutch progressed to the play-offs. They beat Spain 2–0 in both legs of their play-off tie to qualify for a major tournament for the first time in their history. Prior to Euro 2009 the team competed at the Cyprus Cup, where Melis scored four times, twice in their victory over Russia and twice in the match for fifth place against South-Africa, which the Netherlands won 5–0. At the end of the tournament Melis had moved into second position on the all-time top scorer's list of the national team, having scored 17 goals.
At Euro 2009 in Finland, the Dutch were drawn in a group with Ukraine, Denmark, and the hosts, Finland. They started well, with a 2–0 victory over Ukraine. Melis, playing in the number 9 jersey, did not score, but played the whole 90 minutes. The second group match, against Finland in front of a crowd of 15,000, resulted in what the Dutch press called a well-deserved 2–1 loss, meaning elimination or progression depended on the final group game against Denmark. Despite the Danes having more attacking chances and outplaying the Dutch, goals by Smit and Melis sent them through to the quarter-finals with a 2–1 win. Looking back at her career after it ended, Melis singled out this goal as the most special of all her goals for the national team. The quarter-final against the French was scoreless after 90 minutes, mostly due to strong defending by Dutch captain Koster and to French goalkeeper Céline Deville pushing aside a dangerous shot by Melis. In extra time Melis almost scored but her shot just missed the net. A penalty shoot-out was needed to decide the winner. The first eight penalties, including the third, taken by Melis, were all converted. The next five players failed to score. Finally, Anouk Hoogendijk converted her penalty and put the Dutch into the semi-finals against England. In another close game, the Dutch mostly defended. Melis was nearly on the receiving end of a long through ball but it was intercepted by goalkeeper Rachel Brown. England scored first, but the Dutch struck back almost immediately. Melis made room for herself on the right and played across to Marlous Pieëte who equalised. In extra time the English missed several chances before a Jill Scott header gave England a 2–1 win and a place in the final.
### Mid career: 2010–2013
At the 2010 Cyprus Cup Melis scored in three of the four games, ending up joint top scorer of the tournament with New Zealand's Amber Hearn, both with four goals. The Dutch finished in third place. To qualify for the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup, Melis and her teammates had to win a group with Norway, Macedonia, Belarus and Slovakia. Norway won the group without losing a game. After a defeat to Norway in their away game, the Netherlands drew the Scandinavians 2–2 at home, with Melis scoring the opening goal. The Dutch failed to qualify and consequently also missed out on the 2012 Olympics, since only the best performing teams at the World Cup would qualify. In the final qualifier game, against Belarus in August 2010, Melis scored twice, her 29th and 30th international goals, which made her the national team's all-time top goalscorer. She overtook Marjoke de Bakker's goal tally of 29, scored between 1979 and 1991.
Early in 2011 Melis scored three times at the Cyprus Cup, which the Dutch finished in second place. She scored four goals in a 6–0 win over Serbia in the opening match of the UEFA Women's Euro 2013 qualifying group matches. A draw and a loss in their two matches against England left the Dutch competing for second place. Eight goals in total by Melis helped her team qualify directly as best runners-up of all groups. Prior to Euro 2013 in Sweden, she described the host country as her second home. Melis was asked by the Swedish media to introduce the Dutch team to the Swedish public in a video clip. In the Dutch media she said that Sweden was more advanced in terms of media coverage of women's football. The draw put the Dutch in a group with reigning champions Germany, Iceland and Norway. Melis played in all three group games. The opening match against Germany ended in a 0–0 draw. The second game, against Norway, finished 1–0 to the Scandinavians. In the final game the Dutch failed to score again, as Iceland defeated them 1–0, with Dagný Brynjarsdóttir scoring Iceland's winning goal. Melis had a chance to score on a rebound when Martens hit the crossbar but failed to do so, thus ending the tournament for the Netherlands.
### Final years and retirement: 2013–2016
In the opening game of their 2015 World Cup qualification matches, Melis scored a hat-trick in a 4–0 victory over Albania. A loss and a draw in home games with Norway and Belgium respectively put them in third place in the group, but victories in all remaining group matches, against Portugal, Greece, Albania, Belgium and group-winners Norway put them through to the play-offs, with Melis scoring five goals in total. Their opponents in the semi-finals of the play-offs, a two-legged tie, were Scotland. Martens opened the score early on and Melis converted a penalty in the 23rd minute. Kim Little, who later would be Melis's teammate at Seattle, scored for Scotland from the penalty spot as well, but no further goals were scored. In the return leg, Martens and Melis scored again while goalkeeper Geurts kept a clean sheet, sending the Netherlands through to a play-off final against Italy. The first leg ended in a 1–1 draw, the second in a 2–1 victory for the Netherlands, which meant they qualified for their first World Cup tournament. Melis later said they had made history with this qualification, which was one of the highlights of her career.
In front of 53,000 people, the Dutch had a good start with their group games at the 2015 World Cup in Canada. They defeated New Zealand 1–0; Martens, Melis's teammate at Göteborg, scored the only goal. In the next game China started defensively, and despite a few attempts by Melis, kept the Netherlands from scoring before making the winning goal in injury time. In the final group game, hosts Canada led 1–0 for nearly 80 minutes. The Dutch needed a draw to advance. Melis had an opportunity to equalise late on but missed. In the last minutes of the game Kirsten van de Ven scored the equaliser, sending them through to the round of 16. The Dutch started the match against Japan well. Melis had a chance to open the score off a pass from Martens, but could not get a shot in. Soon after, Japan scored and the Netherlands missed chances to equalise as both Vivianne Miedema and Martens failed to connect with a Melis pass. In the second half, Japan scored on the counter, and although van de Ven scored after a mistake by Japanese goalkeeper Ayumi Kaihori, the game ended 2–1 for Japan, who would later make it to the final. Melis did not score at the World Cup.
In March 2016, the Dutch played the final game of their qualifying tournament for the 2016 Olympics, against Sweden. Miedema scored after five minutes from a pass by Melis. After Melis missed a chance, Sweden equalised and qualified for the Olympics. Melis said the Dutch team were still too inconsistent. She was disappointed that the young team would miss the opportunity to gain experience from playing the world's best. On 29 March 2016, Melis announced her retirement from international play to focus fully on her club football in the US league. She had earned 136 caps and scored 59 goals. In November 2016, she retired from professional football altogether. A few days later she performed the draw for the Euro 2017, to be held in the Netherlands. The Dutch went on to win the title without her.
For nearly nine years Melis held the all-time goal-scoring record, until 15 June 2019, when Miedema surpassed Melis by scoring her 60th goal in a 3–1 win over Cameroon at a group stage match at the World Cup tournament in France. As of July 2023, Melis ranked third on the all-time goal scoring list for the Netherlands women's football team.
## Managerial career
After her playing career, Melis started working for Feyenoord, initially doing social outreach for the Feyenoord Foundation and training young girls for the Feyenoord Soccer Schools. In 2017, she was appointed Feyenoord's manager of women's football development. In 2013, she had expressed her wish for Feyenoord to have a professional team so that she could play for them. In interviews throughout her playing career she stressed the importance of the national team doing well for the development of Dutch women's football in general, for "local competition, financially, sponsors, and everything". While it was somewhat unusual for her as a girl in the 1990s to play football, that was no longer true for Dutch girls towards the end of her career. She said that the Dutch team's successful Euro 2017 in the Netherlands had been pivotal for the development of the women's game in the country. She was tasked by Feyenoord with building a girls' football academy for all age groups. By 2019, Feyenoord had set up girls' teams competing in the under 13, under 15, and under 17 leagues, as well as a reserve team in the newly established women's reserve league. In 2019, she spoke publicly of her desire to bring Vivianne Miedema to Feyenoord in the future, given that Miedema is a Feyenoord fan. Melis confirmed in March 2021 that Feyenoord Women would field a team in the Eredivisie Vrouwen for the first time in the 2021–22 season. On the same day, Miedema expressed the hope to one day join the team. Feyenoord finished their first season in fifth position. As recognition for her "tireless work", the club awarded her the Willem van Hanegem Award.
## Style of play
Melis was known for her speed, which earned her the nickname 'The Flying Dutchman' in the US. Her father was also known for his speed. His ex-teammates observed his daughter ran in the same way as he did. She focused more on the differences, stressing that she is a centre forward while he was a winger. Sky Blue assistant coach Emma Hayes noted that apart from being "lightning quick", she was also "technical and with a wonderful eye for goal". Dutch national team coach Arjan van der Laan said Melis was a "superfast" attacker, with excellent goalscoring skills and the ability to set up goals with assists. Martens, her teammate both on the national team and for one season at Göteborg, said Melis had a "killer instinct". Of her goalscoring records Melis has said they seemed more important to others than to her. She was more concerned with winning games and titles.
## Personal life
Melis married Dutch professional basketballer Ties Theeuwkens in 2016, prior to the start of her last season. At the announcement of her retirement from professional football, she said that after ten years abroad it was time to return home to be with her husband. Melis is fluent in Swedish.
## Career statistics
### Club
Statistics not available for amateur clubs RVVH and Be Quick '28, and for 2007–08 domestic cup games. Sky Blue FC did not play while Melis was under contract.
### International
During her 12-year international career Melis scored 59 goals from 136 caps.
## Honours
LdB FC Malmö
- Damallsvenskan: 2010, 2011, 2013
- Swedish Supercup: 2011
Individual
- Damallsvenskan's Most Valuable Player Award: 2010
- Damallsvenskan's Forward of the Year: 2010
Records
- Damallsvenskan top scorer: 2008 (shared with Marta), 2010, 2011 (shared with Margrét Lára Viðarsdóttir)
- Netherlands all-time top goalscorer from 2010 to 2019
## See also
- List of women's footballers with 100 or more international caps
- List of UEFA Women's Championship goalscorers
- List of Netherlands women's international footballers
- List of foreign Damallsvenskan players
- List of OL Reign players
- List of foreign NWSL players
|
308,036 |
Ashton-under-Lyne
| 1,173,620,265 |
Market town in Greater Manchester, England
|
[
"Ashton-under-Lyne",
"Geography of Tameside",
"Market towns in Greater Manchester",
"Towns in Greater Manchester",
"Unparished areas in Greater Manchester"
] |
Ashton-under-Lyne is a market town in Tameside, Greater Manchester, England. The population was 45,198 at the 2011 census. Historically in Lancashire, it is on the north bank of the River Tame, in the foothills of the Pennines, 6 miles (9.7 km) east of Manchester.
Evidence of Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Viking activity has been discovered in Ashton-under-Lyne. The "Ashton" part of the town's name probably dates from the Anglo-Saxon period, and derives from Old English meaning "settlement by ash trees". The origin of the "under-Lyne" suffix is less clear; it possibly derives from the Brittonic-originating word lemo meaning elm or from Ashton's proximity to the Pennines. In the Middle Ages, Ashton-under-Lyne was a parish and township and Ashton Old Hall was held by the de Asshetons, lords of the manor. Granted a royal charter in 1414, the manor spanned a rural area consisting of marshland, moorland, and a number of villages and hamlets.
Until the introduction of the cotton trade in 1769, Ashton was considered "bare, wet, and almost worthless". The factory system, and textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution triggered a process of unplanned urbanisation in the area, and by the mid-19th century Ashton had emerged as an important mill town at a convergence of newly constructed canals and railways. Ashton-under-Lyne's transport network allowed for an economic boom in cotton spinning, weaving, and coal mining, which led to the granting of municipal borough status in 1847.
In the mid-20th century, imports of cheaper foreign goods led to the decline of Ashton's heavy industries but the town has continued to thrive as a centre of commerce and Ashton Market is one of the largest outdoor markets in the United Kingdom. Ashton Town Centre is now home to the 140,000-square-foot (13,000 m<sup>2</sup>), two-floored Ashton Arcades shopping centre (opened 1995), the outdoor shopping complex Ladysmith Shopping Centre, and a large IKEA store.
In 2018, a large new development opened in Ashton town centre including a new college campus for Tameside College, new council offices and a library. Improvements were also made to the open-air market, including new kiosks and stalls. In 2019, work began on a brand-new transport interchange for the town centre to make getting into the town much easier via bus and Metrolink. This opened in August 2020.
## History
Evidence of prehistoric activity in the area comes from Ashton Moss – a 107-hectare (260-acre) peat bog – and is the only one of Tameside's 22 Mesolithic sites not located in the hilly uplands in the north east of the borough. A single Mesolithic flint tool has been discovered in the bog, along with a collection of nine Neolithic flints. There was further activity in or around the bog in the Bronze Age. In about 1911, an adult male skull was found in the moss; it was thought to belong to the Romano-British period – similar to the Lindow Man bog body – until radiocarbon dating revealed that it dated from 1,320 to 970 BC.
The eastern terminus of the early medieval linear earthwork Nico Ditch is in Ashton Moss (); it was probably used as an administrative boundary and dates from the 8th or 9th century. Legend claims it was built in a single night in 869 or 870 as a defence against Viking invaders. Further evidence of Dark Age activity in the area comes from the town's name. The "Ashton" part probably derives from the Anglo-Saxon meaning "settlement by ash trees"; the origin of the "under-Lyne" element is less clear: it could derive from the British lemo meaning elm, or refer to Ashton being "under the line" of the Pennines. This means that Ashton probably became a settlement some time after the Romans left Britain in the 5th century. An early form of the town's name, which included a burh element, indicates that in the 11th century Ashton and Bury were two of the most important towns in Lancashire. The "under Lyne" suffix was not widely used until the mid-19th century when it became useful for distinguishing the town from other places called Ashton.
The Domesday Survey of 1086 does not directly mention Ashton, perhaps because only a partial survey of the area had been taken. However, it is thought that St Michael's Church, mentioned in the Domesday entry for the ancient parish of Manchester, was in Ashton (also spelt Asheton, Asshton and Assheton). The town itself was first mentioned in the 12th century when the manor was part of the barony of Manchester. By the late 12th century, a family who adopted the name Assheton held the manor on behalf of the Gresles, barons of Manchester. Ashton Old Hall was a manor house, the administrative centre of the manor, and the seat of the de Ashton or de Assheton family. With three wings, the hall was "one of the finest great houses in the North West" of the 14th century. It has been recognised as important for being one of the few great houses in south-east Lancashire and possibly one of the few halls influenced by French design in the country. The town was granted a royal charter in 1414, which allowed it to hold a fair twice a year, and a market on every Monday, making the settlement a market town.
According to popular tradition, Sir Ralph de Assheton, who was lord of the manor in the mid-14th century and known as the Black Knight, was an unpopular and cruel feudal lord. After his death, his unpopularity led the locals to parade an effigy of him around the town each Easter Monday and collect money. Afterwards the effigy would be hung up, shot, and set on fire, before being torn apart and thrown into the crowd. The first recorded occurrence of the event was in 1795, although the tradition may be older; it continued into the 1830s.
The manor remained in the possession of the Assheton family until 1514 when their male line ended. The lordship of the manor passed to Sir George Booth, great-great-grandson of Sir Thomas Ashton, devolving through the Booth family until the Earls of Stamford inherited it through marriage in 1758. The Booth-Greys then held the manor until the 19th century; their patronage, despite being absentee lords, was probably the stimulus for Ashton's growth of a large-scale domestic-based textile industry in the 17th century. Pre-industrial Ashton was centred on four roads: Town Street, Crickets Lane, Old Street, and Cowhill Lane. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the town was re-planned, with a grid pattern of roads. As a result, very little remains of the previous town. In 1730 a workhouse was established which consisted of a house and two cottages; it later came to be used as a hospital. The Ashton Canal was constructed in the 1790s to transport coal from the area to Manchester, with a branch to the coal pits at Fairbottom.
Domestic fustian and woollen weaving have a long history in the town, dating back to at least the Early Modern period. Accounts dated 1626 highlight that Humphrey Chetham had dealings with clothworkers in Ashton. However, the introduction of the factory system in the 19th century, during the Industrial Revolution, changed Ashton from a market town to a mill town. Having previously been one of the two main towns in the Tame Valley, Ashton-under-Lyne became one of the "most famous mill towns in the North West". On Christmas Day 1826, workers in the town formed the Ashton Unity, a sickness and benefits society that was later renamed the Loyal Order of Ancient Shepherds. From 1773 to 1905, 75 cotton mills were established in the town. On his tour of northern England in 1849, Scottish publisher Angus Reach said:
> In Ashton, too, there lingers on a handful of miserable old men, the remnants of the cotton hand-loom weavers. No young persons think of pursuing such an occupation. The few who practice it were too old and confirmed in old habits, when the power-loom was introduced, to be able to learn a new way of making their bread.
The cotton industry in the area grew rapidly from the start of the 19th century until the Lancashire Cotton Famine of 1861–1865. The growth of the town's textile industry led to the construction of estates specifically for workers. Workers' housing in Park Bridge, on the border between Ashton and Oldham, was created in the 1820s. The iron works were founded in 1786 and were some of the earliest in the north west. The Oxford Mills settlement was founded in 1845 by the local industrialist and mill-owner Hugh Mason who saw it as a model industrial community. The community was provided with a recreational ground, a gymnasium, and an institute containing public baths, a library, and a reading room. Mason estimated that establishing the settlement cost him around £10,000 and would require a further £1,000 a year to maintain (about £600,000 and £60,000 respectively as of 2023), and that its annual mortality rate was significantly lower than in the rest of the town.
A poor supply of fresh water and dwellings without adequate drainage led to a cholera outbreak in the town in 1832. The Ashton Poor Law Union was established in 1837 and covered most of what is now Tameside. A new workhouse was built in 1850 which provided housing for 500 people. It later became part of Tameside General Hospital. Construction on the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway (SA&MR) began in 1837 to provide passenger transport between Manchester and Sheffield. Although a nine-arch viaduct in Ashton collapsed in April 1845, the line was fully opened on 22 December 1845. The SA&MR was amalgamated with the Sheffield and Lincolnshire Junction Railway, the Great Grimsby & Sheffield Railway, and the Grimsby Docks Company in 1847 to form the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR). In 1890, the MS&LR bought the Old Hall and demolished it to make way for the construction of new sidings.
In the late 19th century, public buildings such as the market hall, town hall, public library, and public baths were built. A donation from Hugh Mason funded the construction of the baths built in 1870–1871. The Ashton-under-Lyne Improvement Act was passed in 1886 which gave the borough influence over housing and allowed the imposition of minimum standards such as drainage. Coal mining was not as important to the town as the textile industry, but in 1882 the Ashton Moss Colliery had the deepest mine shaft in the world at 870 metres (2,850 ft). Ashton's textile industry remained constant between 1865 and the 1920s. Although some mills closed or merged, the number of spindles in use increased. With the collapse of the overseas market in the 1920s, the town's cotton industry went into decline, and by the 1930s most of the firms and mills in the area had closed.
At about 4.20 pm on Wednesday 13 June 1917, a fire in an ammunition factory producing TNT caused an explosion that demolished much of the west end of the town. Two gasometers exploded and the explosion destroyed the factory and threw heavy objects long distances. At least 41 people died and about 100 were injured. Sylvain Dreyfus, managing director of the works, helped to fight the fire but died in the subsequent explosion.
The second of the five victims of the Moors murders, 12-year-old John Kilbride, was lured away from the town's market on 23 November 1963 by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley before being murdered and buried on Saddleworth Moor. His body was found in October 1965.
Ashton became a part of the newly formed Metropolitan Borough of Tameside in 1974. In May 2004, a huge fire ravaged the Victorian market hall, and a temporary building called "The Phoenix Market Hall" was built on Old Cross Street on the opposite side of the Old Market hall. Described as the "heart of Ashton", the market was rebuilt and officially opened on 1 December 2008.
## Governance
Lying within the historic county boundaries of Lancashire since the early 12th century, Ashton anciently constituted a "single parish-township", but was divided into four divisions (sometimes each styled townships): Ashton Town, Audenshaw, Hartshead, and Knott Lanes. Ashton Town was granted a royal charter in 1414, giving it the right to hold a market. All four divisions lay within the Hundred of Salford, an ancient division of the county of Lancashire.
In 1827, police commissioners were established for Ashton Town, tasked with bringing about social and economic improvement. In 1847, this area was incorporated under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, as a municipal borough with the name "Ashton-under-Lyne", giving it borough status. When the administrative county of Lancashire was created by the Local Government Act 1888, the borough fell under the newly created Lancashire County Council. The borough's boundaries changed during the late 19th century through small exchanges of land with the neighbouring districts of Oldham, Mossley, Dukinfield, and Stalybridge. In the early 20th century, the Borough of Ashton-under-Lyne grew; Hurst Urban District was added in 1927, parts of Hartshead and Alt civil parishes in 1935, and parts of Limehurst Rural District in 1954. Since 1956, Ashton has been twinned with Chaumont, France.
Under the Local Government Act 1972, the town's borough status was abolished, and Ashton has, since 1 April 1974, formed part of the Metropolitan Borough of Tameside, within the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester. Ashton-under-Lyne is divided into four wards: Ashton Hurst, Ashton St. Michaels, Ashton St Peters, and Ashton Waterloo. After the 2012 local elections, all twelve seats were held by Labour councillors.
Since the Reform Act 1832 the town has been represented in Parliament as part of the Ashton-under-Lyne parliamentary constituency. During its early years the constituency was represented in the House of Commons by members of the Liberal Party until the late 19th century, when it was broadly held by the Conservative Party. It has been held by the Labour Party since 1935; Angela Rayner has been the constituency's Member of Parliament (MP) since 2015.
## Geography
At (53.4941°, −2.1032°), and 160 miles (257 km) north-northwest of London, Ashton-under-Lyne stands on the north bank of the River Tame, about 35 feet (11 m) above the river. Described in Samuel Lewis's A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848) as situated "on a gentle declivity", Ashton-under-Lyne lies on undulating ground by the Pennines, reaching a maximum elevation of about 1,000 feet (305 m) above sea level. It is 6.2 miles (10.0 km) east of Manchester city centre, and is bound on all sides by other towns: Audenshaw, Droylsden, Dukinfield, Mossley, Oldham, and Stalybridge, with little or no green space between them. Ashton experiences a temperate maritime climate, like much of the British Isles.
Generally the bedrock of the west of the town consists of coal measures, which were exploited by the coal mining industry, while the east is mainly millstone grit. Overlying the bedrock are deposits of glacial sand and gravel, clay, and some alluvial deposits. Ashton Moss, a peat bog, lies to the west of the town and was originally much larger. The River Tame forms part of the southern boundary, dividing the town from Stalybridge and Dukinfield, and the River Medlock runs to the west.
Ashton's built environment is similar to the urban structure of most towns in England, consisting of residential dwellings centred on a market square and high street in the town centre, which is the local centre of commerce. There is a mixture of low-density urban areas, suburbs, semi-rural and rural locations in Ashton-under-Lyne, but overwhelmingly the land use in the town is residential; industrial areas and terraced houses give way to suburbs and rural greenery as the land rises out of the town in the east. The older streets are narrow and irregular, but those built more recently are spacious, lined by "substantial and handsome houses". Areas and suburbs of Ashton-under-Lyne include Cockbrook, Crowhill, Guide Bridge, Hartshead, Hazelhurst, Hurst, Limehurst, Ryecroft, Taunton, and Waterloo.
## Demography
As of the 2001 UK census, Ashton-under-Lyne had a population of 43,236. The 2001 population density was 12,374 inhabitants per square mile (4,778/km<sup>2</sup>), with a 100 to 96.1 female-to-male ratio. Of those over 16 years old, 30.9% were single (never married) and 50.0% married. Ashton-under-Lyne's 18,347 households included 33.2% single people, 33.0% married couples living together, 8.9% co-habiting couples, and 12.4% single parents with their children; these figures were similar to those of Tameside, however both Tameside and Ashton have higher rates of single-parent households than England (9.5%). Of those aged 16–74, 37.0% had no academic qualifications, similar to the figure of 35.2% for all of Tameside but significantly higher than the 28.9% figure for all of England, and 12% had an educational qualification such as first degree, higher degree, qualified teacher status, qualified medical doctor, qualified dentist, qualified nurse, midwife, health visitor, or similar, compared with 20% nationwide.
In 1931, 10% of Ashton's population was middle class compared with 14% in England and Wales, and by 1971, this had increased steadily to 17% compared with 24% nationally. In the same time frame, there was a decline in the working-class population. In 1931, 34% were working class compared with 36% in England and Wales; by 1971, this had decreased to 29% in Ashton and 26% nationwide. The rest of the population was made up of clerical workers and skilled manual workers.
### Population change
In 1700, the population of Ashton, the Tame Valley's main urban area, was an estimated 550. The town's 18th-century growth was fuelled by an influx of people from the countryside attracted by the prospect of work in its new industries, mirroring the rest of the region. In the early 19th century, Irish immigrants escaping from the Great Irish Famine were also drawn to the area by the new jobs created. The availability of jobs created by the growth of the textile industry in the town led to Ashton's population increasing by more than 400% between 1801 and 1861, from 6,500 to 34,886. The population dropped by 9% during the 1860s as a consequence of the cotton famine caused by the American Civil War. The table below details the population change since 1851, including the percentage change since the previous census.
## Religion
St Michael and All Angels' Church is a Grade I listed building that dates back to at least 1262, although it was rebuilt in the 15th, 16th, and 19th centuries. In 1795 it was the only church in the town, and one of only two in Tameside. There was a great increase in the number of chapels and religious buildings in the area during the 19th century, and by the end of the century there were 44 Anglican churches and 138 chapels belonging to other denominations. The most common denominations amongst the chapels were Catholic, Congregationalist, and Methodist.
The 19th-century evangelist John Wroe attempted to turn Ashton-under-Lyne into a "new Jerusalem". He founded the Christian Israelite Church, and from 1822 to 1831 Ashton-under-Lyne was the religion's headquarters. Wroe intended to build a wall around the town with four gateways, and although the wall was never constructed, the four gatehouses were. Popular opinion in the town turned against Wroe when he was accused of indecent behaviour in 1831, but the charges were dismissed. The Church spread to Australia, where it is still active.
As of the 2001 UK census, 68.5% of Ashton residents reported themselves as being Christian, 6.1% Muslim, 5.0% Hindu, and 0.2% Buddhist. The census recorded that 11.4% had no religion, 0.2% had an alternative religion, and 8.7% did not state their religion. The proportion of Hindus in the town was much higher than the average for the borough and the whole of England (1.4% and 1.1% respectively). The percentage of Muslims in Ashton-under-Lyne was nearly double the national average of 3.1%, and was higher than the average of 2.5% for Tameside. As of October 2013, six mosques were located in the town, including one on Hillgate Street in Penny Meadow (Ashton Central Mosque, formerly known as Markazi Jamia Mosque) and one on Katherine Street in West End (Masjid Hamza Mosque).
## Economy
In the medieval period, farming was important in Ashton, particularly arable farming. By the 18th century, textiles had also become important to the town's economy; in the 1700s, 33% of those with jobs worked in textiles and 36% in agriculture. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 18th century, the textile industry in the town boomed. It continued to expand until the cotton famine of 1861–1865, after which the industry remained steady until it collapsed after the overseas markets shut down in the 1920s.
Coal has been mined in Ashton since at least the 17th century. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries demand for coal increased, which led to an expansion of the town's coal industry. The produce of the collieries was transported by canal to Manchester. The industry began to decline during the late 19th century, and by 1904 only the Ashton Moss Colliery was still operational, the last colliery to be opened in the area.
Ashton town centre, which is the largest in Tameside, developed in the Victorian period. Many of the original buildings have survived, and as a result, the town centre is protected by Tameside Council as a conservation area. As well as being populated by leading high-street names, Ashton has an outdoor market which was established in the medieval period. It is made up of about 180 stalls, and is open six days a week. The farmers' market, with over 70 stalls, is the largest in the region, as is the weekday flea market. Ashton Market Hall underwent a £15 million restoration after it was damaged by fire. The Ashton Renewal Area project has attracted investment in the town centre, encouraging conservation and economic development.
The 140,000-square-foot (13,000 m<sup>2</sup>), two-floored Ashton Arcades shopping centre opened in 1995; permission has been granted for a £40 million extension but work on this project has yet to begin. In 2006, after failing twice to gain permission, IKEA announced plans to build its first town-centre store in Ashton-under-Lyne. The store was expected to create 500 new jobs and to attract other businesses to the area. The store opened on 19 October 2006 and covers 296,000 square feet (27,500 m<sup>2</sup>). At the time of its creation, the store was the tallest in Britain.
Amongst the facilities provided by Ashton Leisure Park are a 14-screen cinema, a bowling alley, and several restaurants. The St Petersfield area of Ashton underwent a £42 million redevelopment and provided 2,000 jobs. The aim of the investment was to create a business district in the town and bring life to a neglected area of Ashton. The development provided 280,000 square feet (26,000 m<sup>2</sup>) of office space and 400,000 square feet (37,000 m<sup>2</sup>) of retail and leisure space. Pennine Care NHS Trust relocated its headquarters to the St Petersfield area in 2006. Until then a popular nightspot, in 2002 several night clubs were brought to the brink of closure after a downturn in trade caused by four murders in three months.
According to the 2001 UK census, residents aged 16–74 were employed in the following industries: 22.7% manufacturing, 18.6% retail and wholesale, 11.3% health and social work, 9.8% property and business services, 6.7% construction, 6.5% transport and communications, 5.8% education, 5.6% public administration, 4.3% hotels and restaurants, 3.8% finance, 0.4% agriculture, 0.7% energy and water supply, and 3.9% other. Compared with national figures, the town had a relatively low percentage working in agriculture, public administration, and property, and high rates of employment in construction, at more than triple the national rate (6.8%). The census recorded the economic activity of residents aged 16–74; 2.0% were students with jobs, 3.8% students without jobs, 6.4% looking after home or family, 9.5% permanently sick or disabled, and 3.9% economically inactive for other reasons. Ashton's 4.1% unemployment rate was above the national rate of 3.3%.
## Culture
### Sport
The town's most prominent football teams are Ashton United F.C. and Curzon Ashton F.C. Ashton United was the first team in the Manchester Football Association to win an FA Cup tie, when they beat Turton 3–0 in 1883. In 1885, they were the first winners of the Manchester Senior Cup, beating Newton Heath (who later became Manchester United) in the final. They currently compete in playing at Hurst Cross. Curzon Ashton has competed since 2015 in the National League North, the highest level in the club's history; they play at the Tameside Stadium. Other sporting venues include the Richmond Park Athletics Stadium, which has an all-weather running track with facilities for field events and is home to the East Cheshire Harriers, Tameside Athletics Club, and Ashton Cricket Club, which has won the Central Lancashire Cricket League's first and second division twice each, and the Wood Cup four times. The Ashton Ladysmith Cricket Club is based at the Ladysmith Sport Center at Rose Hill Road and competes in the North Manchester Cricket League.
### Landmarks
After the Ashton Canal closed in the 1960s, it was decided to turn the Portland Basin warehouse into a museum. In 1985, the first part of the Heritage Centre and Museum opened on the first floor of the warehouse. The restoration of the building was complete in 1999; the museum details Tameside's social, industrial, and political history. The basin next to the warehouse is the point at which the Ashton Canal, the Huddersfield Narrow Canal and the Peak Forest Canal meet. It has been used several times as a filming location for Coronation Street, including a scene where the character Richard Hillman drove into the canal.
The earliest parts of Ashton Town Hall, which was the first purpose-built town hall in what is now Tameside, date to 1840 when it was opened. It has classical features such as the Corinthian columns on the entrance facade. Enlarged in 1878, the hall provides areas for administrative purposes and public functions. The Old Street drill hall was completed in 1887.
There are five parks in the town, three of which have Green Flag Awards. The first park opened in Ashton-under-Lyne was Stamford Park on the border with Stalybridge. The park opened in 1873, after a 17-year campaign by local cotton workers; the land was bought from a local mill-owner for £15,000 (£ as of 2023) and further land was donated by George Grey, 7th Earl of Stamford. A crowd of between 60,000 and 80,000 turned out to see the Earl of Stamford formally open the new facility on 12 July 1873. It now includes a boating lake and a memorial to Joseph Rayner Stephens, commissioned by local factory workers to commemorate his work promoting fair wages and improved working conditions. A conservatory was opened in 1907 and Coronation gates were installed at both the Ashton-under-Lyne and Stalybridge entrances in 1953.
Hartshead Pike is a stone tower on top of Hartshead Hill overlooking Ashton and Oldham. The existing building was constructed in 1863 but there has been a building on the site since at least the mid-18th century, although the original purpose is obscure. The pike might have been the site of a beacon in the late 16th century. It has a visitor centre and, from the top of the hill, it is possible to see the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, the Welsh hills and the Holme Moss transmitter in West Yorkshire.
The Witchwood public house, in the St Petersfield area of the town, has been a music venue since the 1960s, hosting acts such as Muse, The Coral and Lost Prophets. In 2004, The Witchwood came under threat when the area was being redeveloped, but was saved from demolition after a campaign by locals and led by Tom Hingley, drawing support from musicians such as Bert Jansch, The Fall and The Chameleons.
The main Ashton-under-Lyne War Memorial, in Memorial Gardens, consists of a central cenotaph on a plinth, surmounted by a sculpted wounded soldier and the figure of "Peace who is taking the sword of honour" from his hand. It commemorates the 1,512 people from the town who died in the First World War and the 301 who died in the Second World War. The cenotaph is flanked on both sides by bronze lions. The plinth is decorated with military equipment representing the services, as well as bronze tablets listing the Roll of Honour from World War I. Commissioned by the Ashton War Memorial Committee, the statue was sculpted between 1919 and 1922 by John Ashton Floyd, and was unveiled on 16 September 1922 by General Sir Ian Hamilton.
The tablet on the front of the memorial reads:
## Transport
### Roads
In 1732, an Act of Parliament was passed which permitted the construction of a turnpike from Manchester, then in Lancashire, to Salters Brook in Cheshire. The road passed through Ashton-under-Lyne as well as Audenshaw, Mottram-in-Longdendale, and Stalybridge. A turnpike trust was responsible for collecting tolls from traffic; the proceeds were used for road maintenance. The trust for Manchester to Salters Brook was one of over 400 established between 1706 and 1750, a period in which turnpikes became popular. It was the first turnpike to be opened in Tameside, and driven by economic growth, more turnpikes were opened in the area in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Acts of Parliaments were passed in 1765, 1793, and 1799 permitting the construction of turnpikes from Ashton-under-Lyne to Doctor Lane Head in Saddleworth, Standedge in Saddleworth, and Oldham respectively. Towards the end of the 19th century, many turnpike trusts were wound up as they were superseded by local government; the last in Tameside to close was the Ashton-under-Lyne to Salters Brook road in 1884. Ashton is now served by the M60 motorway, which cuts through the west end of Ashton (Junction 23).
### Canals
The town of Ashton-under-Lyne became the focus of three canals which were constructed in Tameside in the 1790s because it was an important centre of coal mining in the Lancashire coalfield. The 1790s has been characterised as a period of mania for canal building in England. The first of the three to be built was the Ashton Canal, which was constructed between 1792 and 1797. Connecting Manchester to Ashton-under-Lyne, with a branch to Oldham, it cost about £170,000 (£ as of 2023). The Peak Forest Canal was constructed from 1794 to 1805, and was originally planned as a branch of the Ashton Canal. It connected the Portland Basin with the Peak District and cost £177,000 (£ as of 2023). The Huddersfield Narrow Canal was built between 1794 and 1811, to enable cross-Pennine trade between Manchester and Kingston upon Hull; the cost of construction was £400,000.
The advent of the railways in the 19th century signalled the decline of the canal system. The new railways were quicker and more economical than the canals, and the waterways declined. The Huddersfield Canal was bought by the Huddersfield and Manchester Railway in 1844. Along with the Ashton and Peak Forest canals, the Huddersfield Canal was later bought by the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway Company. The canals remained in use throughout the 19th century on a smaller scale than in their heyday, but by the mid-20th century all commercial traffic had ceased. Following an extended period of closure and dereliction, during which parts of the Huddersfield Canal were filled in or built over, a complete restoration was undertaken and the entire canal reopened in 2001. The three canals are now used for leisure craft and are still maintained and in good condition.
### Railways
The present station at Ashton was opened by the Ashton, Stalybridge and Liverpool Junction Railway (AS&LJR) on 13 April 1846. Known originally as Ashton, it was renamed Ashton (Charlestown) in 1874 and then Ashton-under-Lyne on 6 May 1968. It has regular services on the Huddersfield Line between Manchester (Victoria) and Huddersfield.
The town historically had three stations, only one of which remains: Ashton (Charlestown), Park Parade (closed 1956) and Oldham Road (closed 1959). Park Parade station was on the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway, which was founded in 1836 with the purpose of building a line linking Manchester and Sheffield. The line was opened in stages and was completed by 1845. It included a branch to the nearby town of Stalybridge, the former Ashton Park Parade station was included on this branch. Oldham Road station was on the Oldham, Ashton and Guide Bridge Railway. Additionally, Guide Bridge station, a few miles away, was known as Ashton & Hooley Hill and then Ashton in its earliest years.
### Trams and buses
In 1881, a tramway with horse-drawn tramcars was opened between Stalybridge and Audenshaw, through Ashton-under-Lyne. The first tramway of its kind in Tameside, it was later extended to Manchester. The Oldham, Ashton and Hyde Electric Tramway Company, founded in 1899, operated 13 km (8 mi) of tram lines with electric tramcars. It was the first line around Manchester to use electricity. A line from Stalybridge to Ashton-under-Lyne was opened in 1903 and operated by the Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley & Dukinfield Tramways & Electricity Board. The first bus service from Ashton-under-Lyne ran in 1923 and the 1920s saw a period of decline for the tramways as they suffered from the competition with buses. The last of the first generation of electric tram services in the town ran in 1938.
After a 75-year absence, trams returned to Ashton in October 2013, when the Manchester Metrolink tram system opened the East Manchester Line to the town: Ashton-under-Lyne tram stop in the town centre stands alongside the bus station and is the terminus for the East Manchester Line, which runs to Manchester Piccadilly station and Manchester city centre. Away from the town centre towards Manchester, there are also the Ashton West and Ashton Moss tram stops.
## Education
There are ten nursery schools, sixteen primary schools, and two secondary schools in Ashton-under-Lyne as of 2019. In 2006, the council began a scheme to develop education in the borough by opening six new secondary schools. Among the changes proposed as part of the £160 million scheme was the closure of Hartshead Sports College and Stamford Community High School, to be replaced by a 1,350-pupil academy with 300 sixth-form members. In 2007, Hartshead Sports College was placed on "special measures" after it failed to achieve its targets for General Certificate of Secondary Education results and was criticised by Ofsted for its teaching standard. The new academy opened in September 2008, a year ahead of schedule. It was named New Charter Academy (now Great Academy Ashton) after its sponsor, the New Charter Housing Trust.
The other secondary school in the town is St Damian's RC Science College, which was founded in 1963, and provides education for 800 pupils aged 11–16. As part of the Building Schools for the Future project, a replacement school building was built by Carillion and opened in May 2011. Dale Grove School has 60 pupils and offers education for pupils aged 5–16 with special needs. Ashton Sixth Form College is a centre for further education with 1,650 pupils aged 16–18. Tameside College also provides opportunities for further education and operates in Ashton-under-Lyne, Droylsden, and Hyde. Founded in 1954 and expanded in 1957 and 1964, it was originally called Ashton College.
## Public services
In the early 19th century, Ashton-under-Lyne's growth made it necessary to find a new water supply. Before the introduction of piped water the town's inhabitants drew water from wells and the nearby River Tame. Industrial processes had, however, polluted the river and the wells could not sustain a rapidly expanding population. From 1825, a private company was responsible for piping water from reservoirs, but there were still many homes without proper drainage or water supply. Waste management is now co-ordinated by the local authority via the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority. The first power station in Tameside was built in 1899, providing power for the area. Ashton's distribution network operator for electricity is United Utilities; there are no power stations in the town. United Utilities also manages the drinking and waste water.
Home Office policing in Ashton-under-Lyne is provided by the Greater Manchester Police. The force's Tameside Division have their divisional headquarters for policing Tameside in the town. Public transport in the area is co-ordinated by Transport for Greater Manchester. Statutory emergency fire and rescue service is provided by the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, which has one station on Slate Lane. The Tameside General Hospital is a large NHS hospital on the outskirts of the town, administered by Tameside & Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust. The North West Ambulance Service provides emergency patient transport.
## See also
- List of mills in Tameside
- List of people from Tameside
- Listed buildings in Ashton-under-Lyne
- Ashton-under-Lyne munitions explosion
|
1,505,635 |
Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 1
| 1,104,698,624 |
Church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach
|
[
"1725 compositions",
"Annunciation in Christian art",
"Chorale cantatas",
"Church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach",
"Compositions in F major"
] |
Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern ('How beautifully the morning star shines'), BWV 1, is a church cantata for Annunciation by Johann Sebastian Bach. In 1725, when the cantata was composed, the feast of the Annunciation (25 March) coincided with Palm Sunday. Based on Philipp Nicolai's hymn "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern" (1599), it is one of Bach's chorale cantatas. Bach composed it in his second year as Thomaskantor (cantor at St. Thomas) in Leipzig, where the Marian feast was the only occasion during Lent when music of this kind was permitted. The theme of the hymn suits both the Annunciation and Palm Sunday occasions, in a spirit of longing expectation of an arrival. As usual for Bach's chorale cantata cycle, the hymn was paraphrased by a contemporary poet who retained the hymn's first and last stanzas unchanged, but transformed the themes of the inner stanzas into a sequence of alternating recitatives and arias.
Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern is the last chorale cantata of Bach's second cantata cycle, possibly because the librettist who provided the paraphrases for the middle movements of these cantatas was no longer available. Bach scored the work for three vocal soloists, a four-part choir and a Baroque instrumental ensemble of two horns, two oboes da caccia, two solo violins, strings and continuo. The chorale melody of Nicolai's hymn appears in the opening and closing choral movements of the cantata. All instruments play in the opening festive chorale fantasia, in which the soprano sings the hymn tune, and the two solo concertante violins represent the morning star. An oboe da caccia accompanies the vocal soloist in the first aria. The strings, including the solo violins, return in the second aria. An independent horn part crowns the closing chorale.
The original performance parts of the cantata, partly written by the composer, are conserved in Leipzig. Commentators writing about the cantata, such as Carl von Winterfeld in the 19th century and W. Gillies Whittaker in the 20th century, were particularly impressed by its opening chorus. The Bach-Gesellschaft published the cantata in 1851 as first work in the first volume of their complete edition of Bach's works. From then on known as Bach's Cantata No. 1, it retained that number in the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, published in 1950, and its recording appeared, in 1971, as first work of the first album of Teldec's complete Bach cantata recordings by Harnoncourt and Leonhardt.
## Background
In 1723, Bach was appointed as Thomaskantor and director musices in Leipzig, which made him responsible for the music at four churches. He provided church music for the two main churches, St. Thomas and St. Nicholas, and occasionally also for two others, the New Church and St. Peter. Bach took office in the middle of the liturgical year, on the first Sunday after Trinity.
In Leipzig, cantata music was expected on Sundays and on feast days, except during the tempus clausum ("silent periods") of Advent and Lent. Lutheran Leipzig observed several Marian feasts, including Annunciation on 25 March, nine months before Christmas. In 1725, the feast fell on Palm Sunday. Annunciation was the only occasion for festive music during Lent. The prescribed readings were, as the epistle, Isaiah's prophecy of the birth of the Messiah (Isaiah 7:10–16), and from the Gospel of Luke, the angel Gabriel announcing the birth of Jesus (Luke 1:26–38).
### Cantata cycles
In his first twelve months in office, Bach decided to compose new works for almost all liturgical occasions. These works became known as his first cantata cycle. In his second year in office, Bach composed a cycle of chorale cantatas, with each cantata based on one Lutheran hymn, for the liturgical occasions. The choice of hymn for each of the cantatas was probably made according to the wishes of a local minister, who based the choices upon the prescribed readings and his plans for sermons. Compared to the first cycle, the music has less emphasis on biblical texts, but more on the use of chorale text and melody.
Bach's earliest extant chorale cantata, Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4, written more than a decade before arriving in Leipzig, followed the per omnes versus principle, that is, it adopted the text of all stanzas of the hymn without modification, the hymn's melody being used throughout. Most of the chorale cantatas Bach wrote in his second year in Leipzig, including Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, were formatted differently. In this structure, the outer stanzas of the hymn, and its melody, were retained in the outer movements of the cantata: typically the first stanza was set as an opening chorale fantasia, and the last as a closing four-part chorale. The inner stanzas of the hymn were rephrased into recitatives and arias for the cantata's inner movements, their setting mostly not based on the hymn tune.
### Hymn
Bach's cantata Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern is based on Philipp Nicolai's hymn with the same name. Nicolai wrote the hymn when he was pastor in Unna and faced an outbreak of the plague, intending it to project a view of a heavenly world as counterpoint to pain and suffering in the real world. Nicolai published the hymn in 1599 as part of a collection titled Frewdenspiegel deß ewigen Lebens ('Mirror of the joys of eternal life') in 1599. The hymn tune with which Nicolai published his text, Zahn No. 8359, is reminiscent of a 1538 melody published in the Strasbourg Psalter in 1539 with the song "Jauchzet dem Herren alle Land", possibly by Jakob Dachser, Zahn No. 1705.
The image of the morning star is taken from Revelation 22:16 ("I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star."). In its title, Nicolai indicated the hymn as Brautlied ('Bridal song') of the soul addressing Jesus as its heavenly bridegroom, which refers to Psalm 45, described as a bridal song in the Luther Bible, and to the Song of Songs. Nicolai did not write a paraphrase of the biblical texts, but used elements from them for the seven stanzas of his hymn. He also alludes to the nativity.
The hymn was associated with Epiphany but also with the Annunciation. Expressing the longing for the arrival of the Saviour, it can be connected to the reading about Jesus' birth being announced to Mary. The theme of arrival was also fitting for Palm Sunday, when the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem is celebrated.
### Libretto and first performance
A librettist retained the first and last stanzas of the hymn and paraphrased the other stanzas, using the second stanza for the first recitative, the third stanza for the first aria, the fourth stanza and part of the fifth for the second recitative, and the sixth stanza for the second aria. Bach scholar Alfred Dürr wrote: "The librettist must be credited with the empathy he shows for that fervour which characterises Nicolai's poem and which has made his hymns into an enduring possession of the Protestant Church." While the identity of the librettist, a "poetically and theologically competent specialist", is not certain, scholars have suggested Andreas Stübel, a Leipzig intellectual who held controversial theological views.
For the first performance of the cantata, on 25 March 1725, Bach helped copy out his composition score for the musicians participating in the premiere. Johann Andreas Kuhnau, a main copyist of Bach at the time, produced most of this performance material, that is, all performance parts, except the figured bass part (partly written by the composer) and one of the oboe da caccia parts (written by the composer's son Wilhelm Friedemann).
Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern was to be the last newly-composed chorale cantata of Bach's second cantata cycle. If Stübel was the librettist, his death in January 1725 would explain the end of the chorale cantatas in the second cycle, because Bach lost a competent collaborator and source of inspiration. Bach returned to other texts for the remaining liturgical times of Easter, Pentecost and Trinity. The completion of the cycle of chorale cantatas was so important to him that he included the early chorale cantata for Easter, Christ lag in Todes Banden, in 1725, and over the following decade added a few chorale cantatas for some missing occasions.
## Music
The title page of the extant 18th-century set of performance parts of BWV 1, written around 1750 by an unknown scribe, mentions the occasion (Annunciation), the cantata's title (incipit) and scoring, and its composer.
### Scoring and structure
Bach structured the cantata in six movements. Both text and tune of the hymn are retained in the outer choral movements, a chorale fantasia and a four-part closing chorale, which frame a sequence of alternating recitatives and arias. Bach scored the work for three vocal soloists (soprano (S), tenor (T) and bass (B)), a four-part choir, and a Baroque instrumental ensemble of two horns (Co), two oboes da caccia (Oc), two solo violins (Vs), strings consisting of two violin parts (Vl) and one viola part (Va), and basso continuo. A festive scoring like this, including brass, was usually employed on holidays. The duration of the cantata is given as 25 minutes.
In the following table of the movements, the scoring, keys and time signatures are taken from Dürr. The continuo, which plays throughout, is not shown.
### Movements
Bach provided a rich orchestration. The sparkle of the morning star is illustrated by two solo violins, first in the first chorus, and reappearing with the other strings in the second aria. The sound of the oboe da caccia, first heard in the opening chorus, returns in the first aria. In the closing chorale, the four-part harmony setting of the hymn tune, performed by choir and colla parte instruments, is complemented by a counter-melody played by the second horn. The scoring is reminiscent of Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen, BWV 65, written for Epiphany 1724. Bach would later use the pair of horns in Part IV of his Christmas Oratorio, dealing with the naming of Jesus as announced to Mary.
#### 1
The first movement, "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern" ('How beautifully the morning star shines'), is a stately, richly coloured chorale fantasia for the chorus. The cantus firmus of the chorale melody is sung in long notes of dotted minims by the sopranos. A substantial orchestral 12-bar ritornello or sinfonia begins the movement, with the solo instruments in the foreground; its wide harmonic range contrasts with the chorale, which remains mostly in the tonic key of F major. Bach achieves "unusual animation" by setting the hymn not in common time but . The scintillating semiquaver passagework of two solo concertante violins illustrate the sparkle of the morning star. A baroque pastoral imagery is established by the addition of two other pairs of solo instruments which play pronouncedly below the range of the higher solo violin bariolage, resulting in a transparent multilayered musical texture: the two pairs of horns and oboes da caccia, all associated with the hunt and nature, evoking a bucolic landscape.
The text of the hymn is reflected in the music iconography: the horn calls signify the majesty of the king, while the virtuosic concertante violin passagework signifies the morning star and joy in the universe. Musical analysis of the chorale fantasia makes specific references to the 10 lines of the hymn text; an English metrical translation is given here as an ad hoc composite, combining two early 18th-century sources, the Lyra Davidica and the Psalmodia Germanica, as well as a late 19th-century translation by M. Woolsey Stryker.
The 12-bar sinfonia is based on themes that are derived directly from the cantus firmus (notated here in the soprano clef); in particular the leap of a fifth in the opening theme and the recurring triads. Thus, as conductor John Eliot Gardiner notes, the movement begins intimately with a phrase of the second solo violin, with an orchestral tutti as response. The phrase is reprised a fifth higher by the first solo violin, again answered by the full orchestra. An inversion of the last three quavers in the first theme provides a second theme, which is heard amongst the three different solo instrumental groups—horns, oboes da caccia and violins—and is echoed individually, before an orchestral tutti on a cadence, heralding the entrance of the soprano. The sinfonia is similar in structure to a concerto grosso where different pairs of solo instruments compete against each other.
After the sinfonia, the first line of the soprano cantus firmus is countered by the lower voices with a version of the first theme, doubled by instruments. Throughout the fantasia, whenever the cantus firmus is exposed, it is doubled by the horn. The other nine lines are punctuated by instrumental episodes of differing lengths. Some are quite short, where other pairs of instruments briefly play the first theme. For line 2, the tenor, followed by the alto, sing the cantus firmus in diminution, i.e. sung at twice the speed, with dotted crotchets instead of minims. Line 5 is similar, but this time the alto is followed by the tenor. In the episode between lines 2 and 3, the second themes are heard. Between lines 3 and 4 there is a recurrence of the sinfonia with different solo instruments allocated to the parts. Between lines 4 and 5, there is a two bar episode with the first theme; and between lines 5 and 6, the second theme is heard again. The vocal lines 4–6 are a repetition of lines 1–3, reflecting the over-arching bar form of the movement.
The extended instrumental passage between lines 6 and 7 features a duet between the two concertante violins, with the first theme countering the semiquaver bariolage. In line 7 the word "lieblich" ('lovely') is sung to plain chords in the choir, punctuated by one bar of the first theme; in line 8 the same happens for the word "freundlich" ('kindly'). After a two-bar episode similar to the violin duet, the whole orchestra and chorus are heard in line 9, with rolling quavers, in contrary motion. A 4-bar episode for the concertante violins leads to fugal entries in the lower voices and the climactic tenth line: with animated accompaniment from the entire orchestra and lower voices, the sopranos sing a descending scale to the words "Hoch und sehr prächtig erhaben" ('high and most sublime in splendour'). The orchestral ritornello closes the movement.
Dürr and Richard Jones write that the chorale fantasia is "a movement of jubilant splendour, colourful profusion, and Advent joy". W. Gillies Whittaker describes the long movement as "one of the most unforgettable pictures in musical art" with "kaleidoscopic changes of the fascinating material".
#### 2
The tenor expresses in secco recitative the belief "Du wahrer Gottes und Marien Sohn" ('You, very son of God and Mary'). The text is crafted paraphrasing the second stanza of the hymn, and also alludes to the annunciation from the Gospel reading.
#### 3
In the first aria, the soprano renders "Erfüllet, ihr himmlischen göttlichen Flammen" ('Fill utterly, you divine celestial flames'), accompanied by an obbligato oboe da caccia, an instrument in alto range. The instruments illustrate the celestial flames in coloraturas. Two oboe parts exist for the obbligato instrument, one in the normal clef for an oboe da caccia, the other in a "fingering notation". Ulrich Leisinger, editor of a publication by Carus, noted that it is unclear if the latter was meant to help a player not experienced in the instrument, or if actually two players alternated, which would make breathing easier.
#### 4
In another secco recitative, "Ein irdscher Glanz, ein leiblich Licht rührt meine Seele nicht" ('No earthly gloss, no fleshly light could ever stir my soul'), the bass contrasts earthly light with heavenly light. The terms "Freudenschein" ('joyful radiance') and "Erquickung" ('refreshment') are emphasised by a melisma. Editor Leisinger summarised: "Nothing worldly pleases the soul, only that semblance of joy which is sent by God alone (for which the morning star can evidently serve as an image)".
#### 5
The text of the fifth movement, "Unser Mund und Ton der Saiten" ('Our mouths and the tones of strings'), paraphrases the stanza "Zwingt die Saiten in Cythara" ('Pluck the strings of the cittern'). The aria is sung by the tenor who, following the text, is accompanied by strings only, including the two solo violins from the first movement. An expression of thanks and praise, it is intensified by a dance-like motion, described as "graceful minuet pulse" by Bach scholar Klaus Hofmann. The soloist sings coloraturas on the repeated word "Gesang" ('singing').
#### 6
The closing chorale, "Wie bin ich doch so herzlich froh" ('How heartily glad I am indeed'), is complemented by an independent part of the second horn, while the other instruments play colla parte with the four-part chorale sung by the choir. Thus, the last chorale cantata in the second cantata cycle reaches an "air of baroque festive splendour".
## Reception
When the composer died in 1750, the autograph composition scores of the chorale cantata cycle presumably went with Friedemann, Bach's eldest son, to Halle, where they were later sold: most of these manuscripts, including that of Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, went lost without further trace. Bundles of original performance parts of the chorale cantatas, including Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, were briefly owned by the composer's widow, Anna Magdalena, who sold them to the St. Thomas School. Apart from Bach's motets, these chorale cantatas were the only works of the composer which were performed with some continuity in Leipzig between the composer's death and the 19th-century Bach Revival. Over a century later, the St. Thomas School deposited the original performance part manuscripts of the chorale cantata cycle in the Bach Archive in Leipzig, for conservation.
Carl von Winterfeld's description of the cantata, published in 1847, focuses mostly on the composition's opening movement. Writing in the second half of the 19th century, Philipp Spitta listed 35 Bach chorale cantatas in alphabetical order in the second volume of his biography Johann Sebastian Bach, but assumed that all these works were composed late in Bach's career. He wrote: "In these thirty-five cantatas a series of the most beautiful and the best known Protestant chorales of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is subjected to elaborate treatment." He noted that in Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, the chorale, which was not originally written for the occasion of the Annunciation, had to be connected by expanded poetry to the topic of the feast. Building on Spitta's educated guesswork about the time of origin of Bach's church cantatas—which was later proven to be largely mistaken—Reginald Lane Poole listed the cantata as the last one composed by Bach, thus ranging it as a very mature work.
In the 1906 Bach-Jahrbuch, the third yearbook of the Neue Bachgesellschaft, Woldemar Voigt wrote about the cantata:
The same Bach-Jahrbuch volume presents an overview of performances of Bach's works between late 1904 and early 1907: two are listed for Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, one in Leipzig, and one at the Bethlehem Bach Festival in Pennsylvania. Albert Schweitzer, in his book J. S. Bach, published in 1908 and translated in 1911, still dated the chorale cantatas to 1734 and later. Schweitzer wrote in a short passage about the first movement of Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern that Bach's "music converts the text into an expression of mystical exuberance. In the orchestral accompaniment the themes of the separate hues of the chorale are largely employed as motives."
In 1950, the cantata was listed as BWV 1 in the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis. Dürr's comprehensive study of the chronology of Bach's cantatas was first published in the late 1950s: in it, the cantata's time of origin was fixed to Bach's second year in Leipzig. In preparation of the 2018 Bachfest Leipzig, three Bach experts were asked to name their favourites among Bach's cantatas: Gardiner, Michael Maul (then the festival's new director), and Peter Wollny, the director of the Bach Archive. 15 cantatas appeared in the lists of all three, including Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern.
### Publication
The Bach-Gesellschaft chose Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern as first composition in the first volume of the Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe (BGA). Robert Schumann, the publisher of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Thomaskantor Moritz Hauptmann and philologist Otto Jahn had initiated this first complete edition of Bach's works a century after the composer's death. Its first volume was published in 1851, edited by Hauptmann. Leisinger mentioned three reasons why the Gesellschaft's choice to open their edition with this cantata made sense:
- The text of the cantata consisted of words and thoughtful paraphrases of a traditional chorale, countering mid-19th-century views that "wretched" late Baroque lyrics were an obstacle for reviving Bach's vocal music.
- The cantata's designation for a Marian feast could make it attractive for a Catholic audience too, thus helping to establish the nation-wide importance of the BGA edition.
- Choosing a particularly well-crafted and mature composition, like this cantata, would add to the prestige of its composer, confirming the perception he had composed nothing but masterpieces.
Gustav Rösler [de] prepared a vocal score for a publication by Edition Peters in Leipzig in 1875. Breitkopf & Härtel, the publisher of the BGA, began a series of vocal scores of Bach's cantatas, titled Joh. Seb. Bachs Kirchenkantaten, with this cantata appearing around 1890. They published another version in the same series around 1932, with an English text by Mevanwy Roberts, All glorious doth the day-star shine, a French text by Henriette Fuchs, Brillante étoile du matin, and a piano reduction by Günter Raphael. Possibly in 1928, a score of the cantata was published in the series Eulenburgs kleine Partitur-Ausgabe by Eulenburg in Leipzig; Arnold Schering had revised the BGA, based on the original vocal parts.
An English version was published in London as a vocal score, as part of Novello's Original Octavo Edition, possibly in 1927. The translation, titled How Brightly Shines yon Star of Morn was made by Paul England, and the piano reduction prepared by John E. West. In the U.S., a vocal score appeared in Philadelphia around 1947, titled How Bright and Fair the Morning Star, as No. 88 of the Choral Series of the Association of American Choruses. The New Bach Edition (Neue Bach-Ausgabe, NBA) published the work in 1995, edited by Matthias Wendt, with critical commentary added the same year. Carus published a critical edition in German and English as part of its Stuttgarter Bach-Ausgaben in 1998, edited by Reinhold Kubik. In the 21st century, Bach Digital published high-resolution facsimile images of the manuscript parts from the first quarter of the 18th century.
### Recordings
The conductor Fritz Lehmann recorded Bach's cantatas with the Berliner Motettenchor and the Berliner Philharmoniker with Deutsche Grammophon in the early 1950s. The recordings of nine cantatas, including Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, were reissued in 2018. Fritz Werner recorded around 50 of Bach's church cantatas with the Heinrich-Schütz-Chor Heilbronn and the Pforzheim Chamber Orchestra, mostly in the 1960s, including Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern.
In 1971, Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern was the first cantata recorded for the Teldec series—a project aiming to record all church cantatas by Bach on period instruments in historically informed performances, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt. All vocalists were male singers, as during Bach's tenure in Leipzig. Harnoncourt conducted the first four cantatas (BWV 1 to 4), with the Wiener Sängerknaben and the Concentus Musicus Wien, with a soprano soloist from the boys' choir and a countertenor for the alto part. Helmuth Rilling, who began a recording of all Bach cantatas in 1969 and completed it in 1985, recorded Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern in 1980, with the Gächinger Kantorei and Bach-Collegium Stuttgart.
Pieter Jan Leusink conducted all Bach church cantatas with the Holland Boys Choir and the Netherlands Bach Collegium in historically informed performance, but with women for the solo soprano parts. Gardiner, who in 2000 conducted the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage with the Monteverdi Choir, performing and recording Bach's church cantatas on the occasion for which they written, recorded Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern at St Peter's Church, Walpole St Peter. Masaaki Suzuki, who studied historically informed practice in Europe, began recording Bach's church cantatas with the Bach Collegium Japan in 1999, at first not aiming at a complete cycle, but completing all in 2017. They released Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern in 2007.
## Cited sources
By title
By author
|
13,259,237 |
Parity of zero
| 1,171,830,976 |
Quality of zero being an even number
|
[
"0 (number)",
"Elementary arithmetic",
"Parity (mathematics)"
] |
In mathematics, zero is an even number. In other words, its parity—the quality of an integer being even or odd—is even. This can be easily verified based on the definition of "even": it is an integer multiple of 2, specifically 0 × 2. As a result, zero shares all the properties that characterize even numbers: for example, 0 is neighbored on both sides by odd numbers, any decimal integer has the same parity as its last digit—so, since 10 is even, 0 will be even, and if y is even then y + x has the same parity as x—indeed, 0 + x and x always have the same parity.
Zero also fits into the patterns formed by other even numbers. The parity rules of arithmetic, such as even − even = even, require 0 to be even. Zero is the additive identity element of the group of even integers, and it is the starting case from which other even natural numbers are recursively defined. Applications of this recursion from graph theory to computational geometry rely on zero being even. Not only is 0 divisible by 2, it is divisible by every power of 2, which is relevant to the binary numeral system used by computers. In this sense, 0 is the "most even" number of all.
Among the general public, the parity of zero can be a source of confusion. In reaction time experiments, most people are slower to identify 0 as even than 2, 4, 6, or 8. Some teachers —and some children in mathematics classes—think that zero is odd, or both even and odd, or neither. Researchers in mathematics education propose that these misconceptions can become learning opportunities. Studying equalities like 0 × 2 = 0 can address students' doubts about calling 0 a number and using it in arithmetic. Class discussions can lead students to appreciate the basic principles of mathematical reasoning, such as the importance of definitions. Evaluating the parity of this exceptional number is an early example of a pervasive theme in mathematics: the abstraction of a familiar concept to an unfamiliar setting.
## Why zero is even
The standard definition of "even number" can be used to directly prove that zero is even. A number is called "even" if it is an integer multiple of 2. As an example, the reason that 10 is even is that it equals 5 × 2. In the same way, zero is an integer multiple of 2, namely 0 × 2, so zero is even.
It is also possible to explain why zero is even without referring to formal definitions. The following explanations make sense of the idea that zero is even in terms of fundamental number concepts. From this foundation, one can provide a rationale for the definition itself—and its applicability to zero.
### Basic explanations
Given a set of objects, one uses a number to describe how many objects are in the set. Zero is the count of no objects; in more formal terms, it is the number of objects in the empty set. The concept of parity is used for making groups of two objects. If the objects in a set can be marked off into groups of two, with none left over, then the number of objects is even. If an object is left over, then the number of objects is odd. The empty set contains zero groups of two, and no object is left over from this grouping, so zero is even.
These ideas can be illustrated by drawing objects in pairs. It is difficult to depict zero groups of two, or to emphasize the nonexistence of a leftover object, so it helps to draw other groupings and to compare them with zero. For example, in the group of five objects, there are two pairs. More importantly, there is a leftover object, so 5 is odd. In the group of four objects, there is no leftover object, so 4 is even. In the group of just one object, there are no pairs, and there is a leftover object, so 1 is odd. In the group of zero objects, there is no leftover object, so 0 is even.
There is another concrete definition of evenness: if the objects in a set can be placed into two groups of equal size, then the number of objects is even. This definition is equivalent to the first one. Again, zero is even because the empty set can be divided into two groups of zero items each.
Numbers can also be visualized as points on a number line. When even and odd numbers are distinguished from each other, their pattern becomes obvious, especially if negative numbers are included:
The even and odd numbers alternate. Starting at any even number, counting up or down by twos reaches the other even numbers, and there is no reason to skip over zero.
With the introduction of multiplication, parity can be approached in a more formal way using arithmetic expressions. Every integer is either of the form (2 × ▢) + 0 or (2 × ▢) + 1; the former numbers are even and the latter are odd. For example, 1 is odd because 1 = (2 × 0) + 1, and 0 is even because 0 = (2 × 0) + 0. Making a table of these facts then reinforces the number line picture above.
### Defining parity
The precise definition of a mathematical term, such as "even" meaning "integer multiple of two", is ultimately a convention. Unlike "even", some mathematical terms are purposefully constructed to exclude trivial or degenerate cases. Prime numbers are a famous example. Before the 20th century, definitions of primality were inconsistent, and significant mathematicians such as Goldbach, Lambert, Legendre, Cayley, and Kronecker wrote that 1 was prime. The modern definition of "prime number" is "positive integer with exactly 2 factors", so 1 is not prime. This definition can be rationalized by observing that it more naturally suits mathematical theorems that concern the primes. For example, the fundamental theorem of arithmetic is easier to state when 1 is not considered prime.
It would be possible to similarly redefine the term "even" in a way that no longer includes zero. However, in this case, the new definition would make it more difficult to state theorems concerning the even numbers. Already the effect can be seen in the algebraic rules governing even and odd numbers. The most relevant rules concern addition, subtraction, and multiplication:
even ± even = even
odd ± odd = even
even × integer = even
Inserting appropriate values into the left sides of these rules, one can produce 0 on the right sides:
2 − 2 = 0
−3 + 3 = 0
4 × 0 = 0
The above rules would therefore be incorrect if zero were not even. At best they would have to be modified. For example, one test study guide asserts that even numbers are characterized as integer multiples of two, but zero is "neither even nor odd". Accordingly, the guide's rules for even and odd numbers contain exceptions:
even ± even = even (or zero)
odd ± odd = even (or zero)
even × nonzero integer = even
Making an exception for zero in the definition of evenness forces one to make such exceptions in the rules for even numbers. From another perspective, taking the rules obeyed by positive even numbers and requiring that they continue to hold for integers forces the usual definition and the evenness of zero.
## Mathematical contexts
Countless results in number theory invoke the fundamental theorem of arithmetic and the algebraic properties of even numbers, so the above choices have far-reaching consequences. For example, the fact that positive numbers have unique factorizations means that one can determine whether a number has an even or odd number of distinct prime factors. Since 1 is not prime, nor does it have prime factors, it is a product of 0 distinct primes; since 0 is an even number, 1 has an even number of distinct prime factors. This implies that the Möbius function takes the value μ(1) = 1, which is necessary for it to be a multiplicative function and for the Möbius inversion formula to work.
### Not being odd
A number n is odd if there is an integer k such that n = 2k + 1. One way to prove that zero is not odd is by contradiction: if 0 = 2k + 1 then k = −1/2, which is not an integer. Since zero is not odd, if an unknown number is proven to be odd, then it cannot be zero. This apparently trivial observation can provide a convenient and revealing proof explaining why an odd number is nonzero.
A classic result of graph theory states that a graph of odd order (having an odd number of vertices) always has at least one vertex of even degree. (The statement itself requires zero to be even: the empty graph has an even order, and an isolated vertex has an even degree.) In order to prove the statement, it is actually easier to prove a stronger result: any odd-order graph has an odd number of even degree vertices. The appearance of this odd number is explained by a still more general result, known as the handshaking lemma: any graph has an even number of vertices of odd degree. Finally, the even number of odd vertices is naturally explained by the degree sum formula.
Sperner's lemma is a more advanced application of the same strategy. The lemma states that a certain kind of coloring on a triangulation of a simplex has a subsimplex that contains every color. Rather than directly construct such a subsimplex, it is more convenient to prove that there exists an odd number of such subsimplices through an induction argument. A stronger statement of the lemma then explains why this number is odd: it naturally breaks down as (n + 1) + n when one considers the two possible orientations of a simplex.
### Even-odd alternation
The fact that zero is even, together with the fact that even and odd numbers alternate, is enough to determine the parity of every other natural number. This idea can be formalized into a recursive definition of the set of even natural numbers:
- 0 is even.
- (n + 1) is even if and only if n is not even.
This definition has the conceptual advantage of relying only on the minimal foundations of the natural numbers: the existence of 0 and of successors. As such, it is useful for computer logic systems such as LF and the Isabelle theorem prover. With this definition, the evenness of zero is not a theorem but an axiom. Indeed, "zero is an even number" may be interpreted as one of the Peano axioms, of which the even natural numbers are a model. A similar construction extends the definition of parity to transfinite ordinal numbers: every limit ordinal is even, including zero, and successors of even ordinals are odd.
The classic point in polygon test from computational geometry applies the above ideas. To determine if a point lies within a polygon, one casts a ray from infinity to the point and counts the number of times the ray crosses the edge of polygon. The crossing number is even if and only if the point is outside the polygon. This algorithm works because if the ray never crosses the polygon, then its crossing number is zero, which is even, and the point is outside. Every time the ray does cross the polygon, the crossing number alternates between even and odd, and the point at its tip alternates between outside and inside.
In graph theory, a bipartite graph is a graph whose vertices are split into two colors, such that neighboring vertices have different colors. If a connected graph has no odd cycles, then a bipartition can be constructed by choosing a base vertex v and coloring every vertex black or white, depending on whether its distance from v is even or odd. Since the distance between v and itself is 0, and 0 is even, the base vertex is colored differently from its neighbors, which lie at a distance of 1.
### Algebraic patterns
In abstract algebra, the even integers form various algebraic structures that require the inclusion of zero. The fact that the additive identity (zero) is even, together with the evenness of sums and additive inverses of even numbers and the associativity of addition, means that the even integers form a group. Moreover, the group of even integers under addition is a subgroup of the group of all integers; this is an elementary example of the subgroup concept. The earlier observation that the rule "even − even = even" forces 0 to be even is part of a general pattern: any nonempty subset of an additive group that is closed under subtraction must be a subgroup, and in particular, must contain the identity.
Since the even integers form a subgroup of the integers, they partition the integers into cosets. These cosets may be described as the equivalence classes of the following equivalence relation: x \~ y if (x − y) is even. Here, the evenness of zero is directly manifested as the reflexivity of the binary relation \~. There are only two cosets of this subgroup—the even and odd numbers—so it has index 2.
Analogously, the alternating group is a subgroup of index 2 in the symmetric group on n letters. The elements of the alternating group, called even permutations, are the products of even numbers of transpositions. The identity map, an empty product of no transpositions, is an even permutation since zero is even; it is the identity element of the group.
The rule "even × integer = even" means that the even numbers form an ideal in the ring of integers, and the above equivalence relation can be described as equivalence modulo this ideal. In particular, even integers are exactly those integers k where k ≡ 0 (mod 2). This formulation is useful for investigating integer zeroes of polynomials.
### 2-adic order
There is a sense in which some multiples of 2 are "more even" than others. Multiples of 4 are called doubly even, since they can be divided by 2 twice. Not only is zero divisible by 4, zero has the unique property of being divisible by every power of 2, so it surpasses all other numbers in "evenness".
One consequence of this fact appears in the bit-reversed ordering of integer data types used by some computer algorithms, such as the Cooley–Tukey fast Fourier transform. This ordering has the property that the farther to the left the first 1 occurs in a number's binary expansion, or the more times it is divisible by 2, the sooner it appears. Zero's bit reversal is still zero; it can be divided by 2 any number of times, and its binary expansion does not contain any 1s, so it always comes first.
Although 0 is divisible by 2 more times than any other number, it is not straightforward to quantify exactly how many times that is. For any nonzero integer n, one may define the 2-adic order of n to be the number of times n is divisible by 2. This description does not work for 0; no matter how many times it is divided by 2, it can always be divided by 2 again. Rather, the usual convention is to set the 2-order of 0 to be infinity as a special case. This convention is not peculiar to the 2-order; it is one of the axioms of an additive valuation in higher algebra.
The powers of two—1, 2, 4, 8, ...—form a simple sequence of numbers of increasing 2-order. In the 2-adic numbers, such sequences actually converge to zero.
## Education
The subject of the parity of zero is often treated within the first two or three years of primary education, as the concept of even and odd numbers is introduced and developed.
### Students' knowledge
The chart on the right depicts children's beliefs about the parity of zero, as they progress from Year 1 to Year 6 of the English education system. The data is from Len Frobisher, who conducted a pair of surveys of English schoolchildren. Frobisher was interested in how knowledge of single-digit parity translates to knowledge of multiple-digit parity, and zero figures prominently in the results.
In a preliminary survey of nearly 400 seven-year-olds, 45% chose even over odd when asked the parity of zero. A follow-up investigation offered more choices: neither, both, and don't know. This time the number of children in the same age range identifying zero as even dropped to 32%. Success in deciding that zero is even initially shoots up and then levels off at around 50% in Years 3 to 6. For comparison, the easiest task, identifying the parity of a single digit, levels off at about 85% success.
In interviews, Frobisher elicited the students' reasoning. One fifth-year decided that 0 was even because it was found on the 2 times table. A couple of fourth-years realized that zero can be split into equal parts. Another fourth-year reasoned "1 is odd and if I go down it's even." The interviews also revealed the misconceptions behind incorrect responses. A second-year was "quite convinced" that zero was odd, on the basis that "it is the first number you count". A fourth-year referred to 0 as "none" and thought that it was neither odd nor even, since "it's not a number". In another study, Annie Keith observed a class of 15 second-graders who convinced each other that zero was an even number based on even-odd alternation and on the possibility of splitting a group of zero things in two equal groups.
More in-depth investigations were conducted by Esther Levenson, Pessia Tsamir, and Dina Tirosh, who interviewed a pair of sixth-grade students in the USA who were performing highly in their mathematics class. One student preferred deductive explanations of mathematical claims, while the other preferred practical examples. Both students initially thought that 0 was neither even nor odd, for different reasons. Levenson et al. demonstrated how the students' reasoning reflected their concepts of zero and division.
Deborah Loewenberg Ball analyzed US third grade students' ideas about even and odd numbers and zero, which they had just been discussing with a group of fourth-graders. The students discussed the parity of zero, the rules for even numbers, and how mathematics is done. The claims about zero took many forms, as seen in the list on the right. Ball and her coauthors argued that the episode demonstrated how students can "do mathematics in school", as opposed to the usual reduction of the discipline to the mechanical solution of exercises.
One of the themes in the research literature is the tension between students' concept images of parity and their concept definitions. Levenson et al.'s sixth-graders both defined even numbers as multiples of 2 or numbers divisible by 2, but they were initially unable to apply this definition to zero, because they were unsure how to multiply or divide zero by 2. The interviewer eventually led them to conclude that zero was even; the students took different routes to this conclusion, drawing on a combination of images, definitions, practical explanations, and abstract explanations. In another study, David Dickerson and Damien Pitman examined the use of definitions by five advanced undergraduate mathematics majors. They found that the undergraduates were largely able to apply the definition of "even" to zero, but they were still not convinced by this reasoning, since it conflicted with their concept images.
### Teachers' knowledge
Researchers of mathematics education at the University of Michigan have included the true-or-false prompt "0 is an even number" in a database of over 250 questions designed to measure teachers' content knowledge. For them, the question exemplifies "common knowledge ... that any well-educated adult should have", and it is "ideologically neutral" in that the answer does not vary between traditional and reform mathematics. In a 2000–2004 study of 700 primary teachers in the United States, overall performance on these questions significantly predicted improvements in students' standardized test scores after taking the teachers' classes. In a more in-depth 2008 study, the researchers found a school where all of the teachers thought that zero was neither odd nor even, including one teacher who was exemplary by all other measures. The misconception had been spread by a math coach in their building.
It is uncertain how many teachers harbor misconceptions about zero. The Michigan studies did not publish data for individual questions. Betty Lichtenberg, an associate professor of mathematics education at the University of South Florida, in a 1972 study reported that when a group of prospective elementary school teachers were given a true-or-false test including the item "Zero is an even number", they found it to be a "tricky question", with about two thirds answering "False".
### Implications for instruction
Mathematically, proving that zero is even is a simple matter of applying a definition, but more explanation is needed in the context of education. One issue concerns the foundations of the proof; the definition of "even" as "integer multiple of 2" is not always appropriate. A student in the first years of primary education may not yet have learned what "integer" or "multiple" means, much less how to multiply with 0. Additionally, stating a definition of parity for all integers can seem like an arbitrary conceptual shortcut if the only even numbers investigated so far have been positive. It can help to acknowledge that as the number concept is extended from positive integers to include zero and negative integers, number properties such as parity are also extended in a nontrivial way.
## Numerical cognition
Adults who do believe that zero is even can nevertheless be unfamiliar with thinking of it as even, enough so to measurably slow them down in a reaction time experiment. Stanislas Dehaene, a pioneer in the field of numerical cognition, led a series of such experiments in the early 1990s. A numeral is flashed to the subject on a monitor, and a computer records the time it takes the subject to push one of two buttons to identify the number as odd or even. The results showed that 0 was slower to process than other even numbers. Some variations of the experiment found delays as long as 60 milliseconds or about 10% of the average reaction time—a small difference but a significant one.
Dehaene's experiments were not designed specifically to investigate 0 but to compare competing models of how parity information is processed and extracted. The most specific model, the mental calculation hypothesis, suggests that reactions to 0 should be fast; 0 is a small number, and it is easy to calculate 0 × 2 = 0. (Subjects are known to compute and name the result of multiplication by zero faster than multiplication of nonzero numbers, although they are slower to verify proposed results like 2 × 0 = 0.) The results of the experiments suggested that something quite different was happening: parity information was apparently being recalled from memory along with a cluster of related properties, such as being prime or a power of two. Both the sequence of powers of two and the sequence of positive even numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, ... are well-distinguished mental categories whose members are prototypically even. Zero belongs to neither list, hence the slower responses.
Repeated experiments have shown a delay at zero for subjects with a variety of ages and national and linguistic backgrounds, confronted with number names in numeral form, spelled out, and spelled in a mirror image. Dehaene's group did find one differentiating factor: mathematical expertise. In one of their experiments, students in the École Normale Supérieure were divided into two groups: those in literary studies and those studying mathematics, physics, or biology. The slowing at 0 was "essentially found in the [literary] group", and in fact, "before the experiment, some L subjects were unsure whether 0 was odd or even and had to be reminded of the mathematical definition".
This strong dependence on familiarity again undermines the mental calculation hypothesis. The effect also suggests that it is inappropriate to include zero in experiments where even and odd numbers are compared as a group. As one study puts it, "Most researchers seem to agree that zero is not a typical even number and should not be investigated as part of the mental number line."
## Everyday contexts
Some of the contexts where the parity of zero makes an appearance are purely rhetorical. The issue provides material for Internet message boards and ask-the-expert websites. Linguist Joseph Grimes muses that asking "Is zero an even number?" to married couples is a good way to get them to disagree. People who think that zero is neither even nor odd may use the parity of zero as proof that every rule has a counterexample, or as an example of a trick question.
Around the year 2000, media outlets noted a pair of unusual milestones: "1999/11/19" was the last calendar date composed of all odd digits that would occur for a very long time, and that "2000/02/02" was the first all-even date to occur in a very long time. Since these results make use of 0 being even, some readers disagreed with the idea.
In standardized tests, if a question asks about the behavior of even numbers, it might be necessary to keep in mind that zero is even. Official publications relating to the GMAT and GRE tests both state that 0 is even.
The parity of zero is relevant to odd–even rationing, in which cars may drive or purchase gasoline on alternate days, according to the parity of the last digit in their license plates. Half of the numbers in a given range end in 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 and the other half in 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, so it makes sense to include 0 with the other even numbers. However, in 1977, a Paris rationing system led to confusion: on an odd-only day, the police avoided fining drivers whose plates ended in 0, because they did not know whether 0 was even. To avoid such confusion, the relevant legislation sometimes stipulates that zero is even; such laws have been passed in New South Wales and Maryland.
On U.S. Navy vessels, even-numbered compartments are found on the port side, but zero is reserved for compartments that intersect the centerline. That is, the numbers read 6-4-2-0-1-3-5 from port to starboard.
In the game of roulette, the number 0 does not count as even or odd, giving the casino an advantage on such bets. Similarly, the parity of zero can affect payoffs in prop bets when the outcome depends on whether some randomized number is odd or even, and it turns out to be zero.
The game of "odds and evens" is also affected: if both players cast zero fingers, the total number of fingers is zero, so the even player wins. One teachers' manual suggests playing this game as a way to introduce children to the concept that 0 is divisible by 2.
|
218,937 |
Angel of Death (Slayer song)
| 1,161,752,344 |
Slayer song
|
[
"1986 songs",
"Cultural depictions of Josef Mengele",
"Race-related controversies in music",
"Slayer songs",
"Song recordings produced by Rick Rubin",
"Songs about criminals",
"Songs about physicians",
"Songs about the Holocaust"
] |
"Angel of Death" is the opening track on American thrash metal band Slayer's 1986 album Reign in Blood. The lyrics and music were written by guitarist Jeff Hanneman. They detail the Nazi physician Josef Mengele's human experiments at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.
"Angel of Death" led to accusations of Nazi sympathizing and racism against the band, which they vigorously denied but which followed them throughout their early career. Despite the controversy and the resulting delay in the release of Reign in Blood, the song remained a live favorite, and has appeared on all of Slayer's live albums.
The song has been described as highly influential in the development of thrash metal or speed metal, and is highly regarded by some critics; AllMusic's Steve Huey called it a classic and the album "the pinnacle of speed metal". The half-time riff was sampled by Public Enemy in their song "She Watch Channel Zero?!" from the 1988 album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.
## Composition and origins
Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman wrote "Angel of Death" after reading books about Nazi physician Josef Mengele while on tour with the band. He said that he remembered "stopping someplace where I bought two books on Mengele. I thought, 'This has gotta be some sick shit.' So when it came time to do the record, that stuff was still in my head—that's where the lyrics to 'Angel of Death' came from."
The lyrics are written both from Mengele's point of view and from that of a detached observer condemning his actions. They detail Mengele's surgical experiments on patients at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Mengele's explorations were conducted on such groups as dwarfs and twins, and included both physical and psychological examinations. Among the tests he performed that are mentioned in "Angel of Death" are experimental surgeries performed without anesthesia, transfusion of blood between twins, isolation endurance, gassing, injections with lethal germs, sex change operations, the removal of organs and limbs, and abacination.
## Controversy
The lyrics of "Angel of Death" delayed the release of Reign in Blood which was originally scheduled for April 1986. The band was signed to Def Jam Records, whose distributor, Columbia Records, refused to release the album due to its subject matter and artwork, which they believed were "too graphic". Reign in Blood was eventually distributed by Geffen Records on October 7, 1986, but it did not appear on Geffen Records' official release schedule because of the controversy.
"Angel of Death" caused outrage among Holocaust survivors, as well as their families and the general public. The controversy led to accusations of Nazi sympathizing which have followed Slayer throughout their career. In 1987, Hanneman told the NME magazine:
> I feel you should be able to write about whatever you want. Angel of Death is like a history lesson... I'd read a lot about the Third Reich and was absolutely fascinated by the extremity of it all, the way Hitler had been able to hypnotise a nation and do whatever he wanted, a situation where Mengele could evolve from being a doctor to being a butcher.
People took Hanneman's interest in Nazi history and his collection of Nazi medals (his most prized item being a German Knight's Cross) as evidence of sympathizing. Hanneman objected, stating:
> I know why people misinterpret it – it's because they get this knee-jerk reaction to it. When they read the lyrics, there's nothing I put in the lyrics that says necessarily he was a bad man, because to me – well, isn't that obvious? I shouldn't have to tell you that.
According to guitarist Kerry King: "Yeah, 'Slayer are Nazis, fascists, Communists'—all that fun shit. And of course we got the most flak for it in Germany. I was always like, 'Read the lyrics and tell me what's offensive about it. Can you see it as a documentary, or do you think Slayer's preaching fucking World War II?' People get this thought in their heads—especially in Europe—and you'll never talk them out of it."
The song drew accusations of racism, which the band has denied. The band members are often asked about the accusations in interviews, and have stated numerous times that they do not condone racism and are merely interested in the subject. Hanneman also wrote "SS-3", a song about senior SS commander Reinhard Heydrich, which appeared on the band's 1994 album Divine Intervention. The song "Jihad" from their 2006 album Christ Illusion has drawn comparison to "Angel of Death". "Jihad" deals with the September 11, 2001, attacks, and is told from a terrorist's perspective. Araya expected the subject matter to create a similar backlash to that of "Angel of Death", but it did not materialize—in part, he believes, due to people's view that the song is "just Slayer being Slayer".
## Music and structure
At 4 minutes and 51 seconds, "Angel of Death" is the longest track on the album, which is 29 minutes in total. It is one of the most structurally conventional songs on the album, featuring prominent verses and choruses, which most of the songs eschew. Araya's vocal performance begins with a piercing, wordless scream. "[G]uitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman deliver their intricate riffs [and] drummer Dave Lombardo performs some of the most powerful drumming ever recorded" at 210 beats per minute.
When drummer Lombardo left Slayer in 1992, they recruited a full-time replacement in Forbidden drummer Paul Bostaph. Bostaph made one mistake out of the nine songs the band trialled him with, on "Angel of Death". Before the "big double bass part" there is a lead section, which Bostaph could not understand, as he had to learn from live records recorded with Lombardo. Bostaph could not tell how many revolutions the guitar riff goes before the bass sequence. The band members told him there were eight, "perfecting" the song afterwards.
The song is also linguistically significant for containing the only recorded use of the word "abacinate", as mentioned in Christopher Foyle's Foyle's Philavery: A Treasury of Unusual Words.
## Reception and legacy
Although "Angel of Death" did not chart, it was highly praised by critics reviewing Reign in Blood. Clay Jarvas of Stylus Magazine observed how the song "smokes the asses of any band playing fast and/or heavy today. Lyrically outlining the horrors to come, while musically laying the groundwork for the rest of the record: fast, lean and filthy." Adrien Begrand of PopMatters remarked that "There's no better song to kick things off than the masterful 'Angel of Death', one of the most monumental songs in metal history."
The song was notably sampled for use as the main riff in the 1990 song "Godlike" by industrial act KMFDM.
The same riff has been sampled by many other artists including Public Enemy for their track "She Watch Channel Zero".
"Angel of Death" was featured in the opening scene of the 2002 stunt comedy Jackass: The Movie, where Johnny Knoxville rents and modifies a car before engaging in a crash-up derby.
## Personnel
- Tom Araya – bass, vocals
- Kerry King – guitars
- Jeff Hanneman – guitars
- Dave Lombardo – drums
Production
- Rick Rubin – production
- Howie Weinberg – mastering
- Andy Wallace – engineering
## See also
- List of anti-war songs
|
22,454,367 |
Robert Roberts (writer)
| 1,140,127,418 |
English teacher and writer (1905–1974)
|
[
"1905 births",
"1974 deaths",
"20th-century English educators",
"20th-century English historians",
"Deaths from cancer in England",
"English Esperantists",
"English conscientious objectors",
"English socialists",
"Writers from Salford"
] |
Robert Roberts (15 June 1905 – 17 September 1974) was an English teacher, writer and social historian, who penned evocative accounts of his working-class youth in The Classic Slum (1971) and A Ragged Schooling (1976).
Born and raised above his parents' corner shop in a deprived district of Salford, Roberts left school at 14 to undertake a seven-year apprenticeship as a brass finisher. Used as a form of cheap labour to carry out menial tasks, he was dismissed when the apprenticeship ended in 1926. Roberts inherited his mother's love of reading and socialist politics; while he spent the next three years unemployed, he attended evening classes to study foreign languages and social history.
In 1929, he was hired as a tutor/teacher at a commercial college. A staunch internationalist, he was dismissed from this job in 1940 when he was exempted as a conscientious objector from military service in the Second World War. After a short period teaching in Liverpool, he spent most of the 1940s and the 1950s working on a relative's farm in Yorkshire while teaching adult education classes and writing for the radio and newspapers. In 1957, he was hired as an education officer at Strangeways Prison in Manchester where he taught illiterate prisoners to read and write, experiences which formed the basis of his first book, Imprisoned Tongues (1968).
In 1971, Roberts followed this up with The Classic Slum, an account of his upbringing in Edwardian Salford which he intermixed with social and oral history. Roberts produced the book to counter what he felt were romantic conceptions of the working-class community in post-war sociological and social history studies; while emphasising the strength of many individual characters, his book highlighted the pervasive and often devastating effects of poverty, as well as the complex status distinctions and conservatism this produced among residents in his "slum". Widely praised on its release, this richly textured account has become a key source for understanding working-class experience in early-20th-century England. Two years later, Roberts moved to Hampshire where he died in 1974. His autobiography, A Ragged Schooling, was published posthumously; also praised, it was a more personal account of his childhood, teenage and early adult years.
## Life
### Background
Robert Roberts was born on 15 June 1905 at 1 Waterloo Street in Salford, Lancashire. His home town had played a key role in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution: with its neighbour Manchester, it had emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries at the centre of global textile manufacturing and the new factory system of production. This led to the conurbation's rapid expansion, but it also brought poverty as the often poorly paid workers were accommodated in small, densely crowded and unsanitary housing. Friedrich Engels was one of many social observers who commented on this; his description of Salford in The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) highlighted the terrible state of the districts where the workers lived:
> Whoever passes over this viaduct and looks down, sees filth and wretchedness enough; and, if any one takes the trouble to pass through these lanes, and glance through the open doors and windows into the houses and cellars, he can convince himself afresh with every step that the workers of Salford live in dwellings in which cleanliness and comfort are impossible.
Salford's economy had diversified by the time Roberts was born; cotton was still important, though engineering had become a key employer and other manufacturing industries had emerged. Nevertheless, poverty and poor housing remained endemic in working-class districts. Roberts's father, Robert (born c. 1872), was an engineer. His son described him as "firmly embedded in the working class", a "formidable figure in our neighbourhood ... a fair, handsome man, violent in drink and, when sober, eloquent after a loud-mouthed Celtic fashion". He married Jane Elizabeth "Jennie" Jones, and with her had seven children; the younger Robert was the fourth. Jennie had been a weaver before her marriage and unlike her husband had experienced a decent elementary education. Within a year of their marriage, the elder Robert had grown tired of travelling to Derbyshire to work for a firm of engineers. He was envious that his brothers-in-law were shopkeepers, and borrowed £40 from one of his sisters, who had all married well, to purchase a corner shop in a slum neighbourhood.
### Early life (1905–1919)
Roberts and his siblings were born and raised at the family shop in Waterloo Street. Roberts would draw heavily on his experiences of growing up in this part of Salford when he compiled his autobiographical-historical books decades later. Living above and assisting in the shop allowed him to "eavesdrop on life", as he later wrote; all sorts of people from the community passed through which, along with his own parents' habits, gave him insights into the way people lived in his working-class district. Jennie ran the business, but the elder Robert's work as an engineer was punctuated by periods of unemployment; this combined with the shop's limited takings (in such a poor area) and his heavy drinking to keep the family tied to their neighbourhood for decades. The business nearly failed in 1911. Nevertheless, as their son later wrote, they were not "felt to be" fully part of the slum: Robert and Jennie's extended families included relatives with more money or social status than them; the elder Robert was a skilled worker, which brought higher status with it; and Jennie ranked highly in the community because of the status ascribed to her as a shopkeeper and because she could offer credit to other residents.
Roberts did not place his father in high esteem; in his later writings, he criticised the elder Robert's drunkenness and mocked his desire for social status (which Roberts saw as pretentious). He admired his mother Jennie. An avid reader, she inculcated in the younger Robert a lifelong passion for reading and a socialist worldview. His formal education at Christ Church School ended at the age of 14. According to Roberts, he wanted to remain in education, but the school's curriculum did not cover the subjects needed to obtain a bursary to study at the local technical college. The headteacher would not offer extra tuition, so when Roberts sat the bursary examinations he failed and was told by his father to find work.
### Apprenticeship and unemployment (1919–1929)
He then began a seven-year apprenticeship as a brass finisher. During the 1920s and 1930s, apprentices in engineering were paid less than other workers. As such, employers frequently used them as a source of cheap labour, often with limited training. Roberts's apprenticeship consisted of his repeating mundane tasks for eight and a half hours every day:
> Tich led me to a small contraption by a window, pulled a lever to put wheels in motion, tightened a union nut on a pedestal, and ran both, by ratchet, through a couple of whirring butterfly cutters. These flayed and polished two parallel sides of the nut. He then arced the pedestal through 120 degrees and again drove it through the cutters to shave two more flanks. "Now you do it!" ... Over the next two years, in between brushing the alleys and brewing thirty cans of tea each morning, I performed this simplest of tasks for eight and a half hours every working day. This was called an "engineering apprenticeship".
Roberts disliked the job intensely; even after he had been there long enough that new apprentices took over the sweeping (which dispersed metal dust into the air that irritated his lungs), he was required to stand in one place for hours on end to do his job. He recalled in his autobiography that he felt trapped: he yearned to read books, learn, enjoy music and visit Europe. During this time, he became involved in the labour movement. It was also common in the interwar period for wages to increase sharply on the completion of an apprenticeship, owing to pay structures and union contracts. This increase was often out of step with the limited productivity gained in the process (especially as the apprentice had often been used to carry out low-skilled, routine tasks); it was cheaper for an employer to lay off the apprentice on completion of his "training" and hire a new one to do the same job. Roberts was one of many young men who suffered this fate. After finishing his apprenticeship in 1926, he was summarily dismissed. The next three years were spent jobless. He attended evening classes to learn French and study social history and English literature, and in 1927 founded the Salford Esperanto Society.
### Teaching, farm work, writing and later life (1929–1974)
In 1929, Roberts was employed as a French teacher by a local commercial college. According to his son, Roberts had been attending classes at the college and he obtained the position after he filled in for his teacher during a lesson and impressed the staff. He remained involved in the labour movement and became an internationalist, serving for a time as president of the Manchester Workers' International Club and opposing fascism in Europe (he paid visits to the continent to speak publicly on the topic). In 1935 he married Ruth Dean, with whom he had a son Glyn in 1937. Like Roberts, she was a keen Esperantist and a teacher.
Roberts objected to fighting in the Second World War on conscientious grounds; he was exempted from service in 1940, which led him to be sacked from his job. He then worked at the National Council of Labour Colleges in Liverpool (where he contracted tuberculosis) and then at his grandfather-in-law's farm in Yorkshire. He travelled to Sweden to work as a teacher in 1949, but his work was frustrated when his tuberculosis returned. After treatment, he came back to England. While continuing to work on the farm into the 1950s, Roberts was a part-time adult education tutor and wrote material for the radio (including the children's programme Crusoe Farm for the BBC) and the press.
Roberts was employed by Strangeways Prison in Manchester in 1957 as an education officer. His first book, Imprisoned Tongues, was printed in 1968 and described his work with illiterate prisoners. He also taught adult education classes outside of prison, sometimes with his wife. In 1971 his next book, The Classic Slum, was published, offering Roberts's account of his childhood which he intermixed with social history. Two years later, he and Ruth moved to live in Hampshire and in 1974 he was awarded an honorary master's degree by the University of Salford. He became ill with cancer and died, in Gosport, on 17 September 1974. His second autobiography, A Ragged Schooling, was published posthumously two years later. In 1985, the Manchester Studies Unit at Manchester Polytechnic held an exhibition called "The Classic Slum" at Cavendish House; inspired by Roberts's book, it contained a selection of the 60,000 photographs they had collected of Edwardian Salford. Ruth died in 2004. Their son Glyn worked in international development for non-governmental organisations, co-founded Tools for Self Reliance, and authored Questioning Development in 1974; a writer and traveller himself, he died in 2016.
## Work
### Imprisoned Tongues (1968)
Imprisoned Tongues was Roberts's first book. Published in 1968 by Manchester University Press, it offered an account of his experiences teaching illiterate and poorly literate prisoners to read and write. He ran hourly classes in 16-week courses. In the opening chapter, he explains that "since little seems to have been written about teaching the illiterate and educationally backward in gaol, I have tried to set down an account of my own experience in the hope that it might be useful to tutors and others coming new to the prison service". Roberts advocated a learning programme in which beginners entered a small class and progressed to larger group sessions once they had mastered the basics. The book included chapters on the prisoners' backgrounds, the use of role playing and group teaching styles, communication methods, and the involvement of prison staff, as well as a glossary of slang.
Writing in The Guardian, P. J. Monkhouse praised the book for its "lively" prose and sympathy. In the British Journal of Psychiatric Social Work, E. E. Irvine commended Roberts's "chatty" style and rich array of anecdotes. He felt that the book would be "illuminating" reading for new prison welfare officers and that Roberts's technique to engage prisoners in creative writing was especially interesting. Writing in The British Journal of Criminology, Tony Parker also praised the book for sympathetically shedding light on prisoners' lives and experiences; he described Roberts's methods as "fascinating", though took issue with the way Roberts preserved the prisoners' accents in recorded speech. By contrast, John Gunn (in The British Journal of Psychiatry) thought the book fell short of its aim to examine the sociology of the prison because of its limited "form": in his view, its themes were undeveloped, its structure arbitrary and the long quotes distracting. He would have preferred more statistics, but conceded that the work had useful practical advice about prison management, was right to emphasise communication issues between prisoners and psychiatrists, and included "illuminating" extracts of the prisoners' work. The reviewer J. G. Mitchel also wrote that more statistical information would have improved the work, but that Roberts's descriptions of the prisoners' experiences and his extracts of the prisoners' work were the book's "strengths". Mitchel felt that Roberts's teaching method (the look-and-say technique) was outdated and noted his rejection of the new phonic approach.
### The Classic Slum (1971)
The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century was published by Manchester University Press in 1971 and reprinted by Pelican Books (1978) and Penguin Books (1990). Mixing autobiography, social history and oral history, it gave an account of the Salford "village" of Roberts's childhood and adolescence. In the preface, Roberts explains that he wrote the book because descriptions of working-class life in the period "naturally lacked the factuality that first-hand experience might have given it; few historians are the sons of labourers". He hoped that, as someone who grew up in that environment, he would be able to provide such an account. Its thematically-arranged chapters explored the class structure of the "slum", its residents' possessions and material culture, their manners, food and drink, culture, and schooling. Another chapter discussed prison and the Poor Law system. The final two chapters in the book focused on the First World War and its aftermath. Three appendices each contained a short story: "Conducted Tour" narrated two children exploring their environment, "Snuffy" was about a boy in a library, and "Bronzed Mushrooms" followed a brass worker in the mid-1880s. The book included material on childhood, women's experiences, sexuality, antisemitism, racism, politics, morality and religion; it also articulated Roberts's argument that the First World War profoundly and permanently altered the material, social and political lives of the residents.
#### Contemporary reception
The book was widely acclaimed on its release. Marghanita Laski in The Times called it the "direct, personally-reminiscent examination we would always wish to have of life in any class". Reviewing the book for The Daily Telegraph, Michael Kennedy praised the "vivid, moving, funny, unsentimental" first-hand descriptions, arguing that it "may well be a classic book"; in The Sunday Telegraph, J. M. W. Thompson praised the way Roberts mixed together personal reminisces with social history. Keith Dewhurst for The Guardian commended Roberts's richly textured account and the wealth of information he included. Its usefulness as a source was also praised in an anonymous review for The Guardian, which lauded the inclusion of photographs of Edwardian Salford by Samuel Coulthurst.
The social historian Harold Perkin wrote in The English Historical Review that The Classic Slum was "a remarkable book, and Robert Roberts is a remarkable author ... His account is a source of first importance for the social history of the Edwardian age". In the journal Sociology, Campbell Balfour called the book "unusual, interesting, and highly readable" and argued that "as a descriptive study of lower working class life it can have few equals". Gerald D. Suttles's review in Contemporary Sociology praised it as "an interesting and revealing social history... [it is] social history and ethnography ... done well". Writing in The British Journal of Sociology, Peter Marris was impressed by the "brilliant evocation" Roberts provided of the Salford of his youth and thought the short stories at the end were "masterpieces" if "awkwardly labelled". C. A. Woolfson, in Urban Studies, also praised the work for its historical dimension but suggested that its lack of material on the Irish experience was a limitation. For Teaching History, the reviewer John Standen called it "exceptional" and praised its readability.
It was met with a more qualified response by E. W. Cooney in The Economic History Review; while noting its "vivid, richly textured and sometimes moving" portrayal of working-class life and its "interesting" arguments about conservatism, status and illiteracy, Cooney observed that much of the material was solely based on memory or on conversations with other people which took place half a century before publication. The reviewer also critiqued the book for its lack of citations and for Roberts's generalisations based on his own experiences. Though praising its evidentiary value and insights into slum life, P. J. Waller (in the journal History) also critiqued Roberts's limited referencing, and felt that the weaker points of the book occurred where he engaged with academic debates.
#### Themes and contributions to scholarship
Writing in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the historian Andrew Davies described The Classic Slum as Roberts's "most influential book". Alongside Roberts's other book A Ragged Schooling and Walter Greenwood's Salford-based novel Love on the Dole (1933), Davies, Steven Fielding and Terry Wyke observed that The Classic Slum has "been taken to typify the national working-class experience [and] played an important role in shaping our understanding of working-class life". The historian Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite has described the book as "a seminal account of the Edwardian working classes", and in a literature review for the journal Sociology Compass, Ian Roberts described it as a "classic" text in working-class studies and community studies.
The Classic Slum has been characterised by the historian Jon Lawrence as "anti-romantic". In the words of the literary scholar Michael Rosenfeld, Roberts saw his past as something "to overcome and transform, not affirm and validate". Roberts was writing in opposition to post-war sociologists who emphasised positive features of communities like his; he asserted that "close propinquity, together with cultural poverty, led as much to enmity as it did to friendship". He was also sceptical of those residents who expressed nostalgia during the post-war slum clearance programmes. In the late 1990s and 2000s, historians "built upon" Roberts's work to critique "romanticised accounts of working-class community" in works like Michael Young and Peter Willmott's 1957 book Family and Kinship in East London (which in its depiction of kinship networks otherwise had similarities with Roberts's work).
Sociologists had often looked to the working class as the potentially revolutionary proletariat, but Roberts gave the impression of a conservative class at odds with the more radical one noted by earlier writers; in his view, the intense poverty and struggle to survive led residents to accept the socioeconomic structures that determined their situation and make do as best they could under the circumstances. He emphasised how the residents were highly differentiated, aware of complex social distinctions between each other and formed from a mix of social groups divided along occupational and social status lines. The Classic Slum therefore depicted a complex status hierarchy focused on a code of respectability. This was partly because many residents had to depend on credit supply which was determined by their respectability and their reputation for financial solvency. Roberts's impression of the district thus sharply contrasted with the notion of the cohesive "traditional working class" used by many social scientists. Roberts emphasised the political conservatism prevalent among the labouring sections especially, describing them as "politically illiterate" and highlighting their apathy and deferential attitudes. He also expressed his frustration at the disdain for art, literacy and high culture held by many residents (men, for instance, associated an interest in reading with homosexuality, which was highly stigmatised). As such, Rosenfeld has argued that Roberts's writing captures his "disappointed radicalism". Roberts did recognise, however, that conservatism was a product of the poverty residents lived with, their feelings of powerlessness and their lack of education. In the words of one reviewer, he saw "courage" in their struggle to survive, even if he was disappointed by the "subservience" it produced.
The cultural studies scholar Susanne Schmid has noted that Roberts was unusual in incorporating the voices of his working-class subjects in the account; she has argued that, unlike many social commentators, he presented residents as active agents who "constantly interact[ed] through communal activities, through gossip, through competing displays of their modest prosperity". Whereas outside observers (including sympathetic ones like Engels and George Orwell) often depicted the working class as both passive and dirty, Roberts emphasised their constant striving to keep clean, which stemmed from their desire for respectability. Schmid has also argued that Roberts expressed some nostalgia for a "pure" form of English working class culture, which had become Americanised by the time he wrote the book.
### A Ragged Schooling (1976)
Roberts's third and final book was his autobiography A Ragged Schooling: Growing up in the Classic Slum, published by Manchester University Press in 1976 and reprinted in paperback by Fontana in 1978. There were 19 chapters recounting aspects of Roberts's childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. Some of the chapters were thematically organised, covering topics such as food, class, religion, fears, sexuality and superstitions. Chapters 15 focused on the First World War and was followed by accounts of Roberts's schooling, apprenticeship, working conditions and trade unionism, and his self-guided education.
Writing for The Observer, Paul Bailey called it a "memoir of quite extraordinary richness"; he found parts of it moving and others funny, and thought it just as good as The Classic Slum. Selina Hastings, for The Sunday Telegraph, praised the book for its humour. In a review for the Birmingham Daily Post, Roy Palmer commended the "splendid book, full of humour, life, compassion and humanity"; he praised the "sheer strength and depth of writing" and found the imagery evocative. For the Lichfield Mercury it was "a remarkable piece of living history".
Though not as influential as The Classic Slum, it confirmed to Davies Roberts's "reputation as one of the most sensitive chroniclers of English working-class life". Like his previous book, it contained a wealth of material about the working class and has been influential in historical writing on the topic. It has also been used by scholars interested in women's experiences and sexuality in working-class communities. A Ragged Schooling is, however, a highly personal and "intimate" account, focused on Roberts's experiences through to his young adulthood. Publishers Weekly noted that the book was "thematic and anecdotal: at its core are the mysteries of sex, religion, work and the rigors of daily life". His relationship with his mother was also a key theme; he admired her work ethic and attitude towards education, and the book ends with her death.
|
1,014,333 |
Flood (Halo)
| 1,169,473,245 |
Fictional parasitic alien lifeform in the Halo video game series
|
[
"Extraterrestrial characters in video games",
"Fictional extraterrestrial life forms",
"Fictional omnicide perpetrators",
"Fictional parasites and parasitoids",
"Fictional superorganisms",
"Halo (franchise)",
"Mutant characters in video games",
"Undead characters in video games",
"Video game characters introduced in 2001",
"Video game species and races"
] |
The Flood is a fictional parasitic alien lifeform and one of the primary antagonists in the Halo multimedia franchise. First introduced in the 2001 video game Halo: Combat Evolved, it returns in later entries in the series such as Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo Wars. The Flood is driven by a desire to infect any sentient life of sufficient size; Flood-infected creatures, also called Flood, in turn can infect other hosts. The parasite is depicted as such a threat that the ancient Forerunners constructed artificial ringworld superweapons known as Halos to contain it and, as a last resort, to kill all sentient life in the galaxy in an effort to stop the Flood's spread by starving it.
The Flood's design and fiction were led by Bungie artist Robert McLees, who used unused concepts from the earlier Bungie game Marathon 2. The setting of the first game, the ringworld Halo, was stripped of many of its large creatures in order to make the Flood's surprise appearance more startling. Bungie environment artist Vic DeLeon spent six months of pre-production time refining the Flood's fleshy aesthetic and designing the organic interiors of Flood-infested spaceships for Halo 3.
The player's discovery of the Flood in Halo: Combat Evolved is a major plot twist, and was one of the surprises reviewers noted positively. The Flood's return in Halo 2 and Halo 3 was less enthusiastically praised. Reaction to the Flood has varied. While some critics have described the Flood as derivative or clichéd, others have ranked it among the greatest video game villains.
## Development
The Flood is depicted as a parasitic organism that infects any sentient life of sufficient size. The largest self-contained form that the Flood can produce itself without using other biomass is an "infection form". These forms seeks hosts, living or dead, and attempt to drive sharp spines into the host and thereby tap into the nervous system. The host is incapacitated while the infection form burrows into the host's body and begins the mutation process, bringing the host under Flood control. Depending on the size or condition of the body, the infection form mutates the hapless host into various specialized forms in the continual drive for more food. Larger hosts are turned into forms for combat, growing long whip-like tentacles, while mangled and disused hosts are turned into incubators for more infection forms. The Flood also creates forms known as "key minds" to coordinate the Flood; these include the apex of Flood evolution, known as "Graveminds".
The Flood was added early in Bungie's development of the 2001 video game Halo: Combat Evolved, before the game had made its jump from the Macintosh platform to the Xbox. A design for one Flood form appeared as early as 1997. Commenting upon the inception of the Flood, Bungie staff member Chris Butcher noted that "the idea behind the Flood as the forgotten peril that ended a galaxy-spanning empire is a pretty fundamental tenet of good sci-fi. Yeah, and bad sci-fi too." Another inspiration was Christopher Rowley's The Vang series. Early design for the Flood was done by Bungie artist and writer Robert McLees, who considers himself "the architect" of the Flood; the Flood's roots are reflected in concept art of a "fungal zombie" that McLees did for the earlier Bungie game Marathon 2: Durandal. McLees also did all the early concept art for the Flood.
Based on the behavior of viruses and certain bacteria, the Flood was intended to be "disgusting and nasty"; McLees modeled one Flood form off the memory of his cousin's infected thumb. The creatures were constructed from the corpses and bodies of former combatants, so the artists had to make sure the Flood soldiers were recognizable while changing their silhouette enough to differentiate them from the uninfected. Many concepts and ideas were discarded due to time constraints—initially, the Flood was intended to convert any species of the alien Covenant into soldiers. "We didn't have the resources to make it happen," McLees recalled, so they modified the game's fiction to suggest that some Covenant were too small or too frail to serve as combat troops. The technical inability to create different Flood forms procedurally informed the game's fiction that the Flood had optimized their host forms over years of trial and error, creating standardized templates that the developers used to obfuscate the repeated use of similar models. Likewise, the Flood enemy intelligence was intended to be as complicated as that of the other enemy faction in the game, but full implementation was cut for time. The dinosaur-like terrestrial wildlife that originally dwelled in Halo's environments were dropped due to gameplay constraints and fear that their presence would reduce the surprise and impact of the Flood.
Bungie decided a new visual language for the Flood was needed for Halo 3. The task of developing the new Flood forms, organic Flood terrain, and other miscellaneous changes fell to Vic DeLeon, then Bungie's Senior Environment Artist. Early concepts of what became new morphing Flood types in the game called "pure forms" featured the creatures wielding an array of weapons via tendrils, while forms like the Flood infector and Flood transport concepts never made it into the final game. The pure forms had to morph between three radically different looks, and it proved challenging to make plausible transformations that also looked good once it was developed and animated in 3D. Artist Shi Kai Wang suggested that in the end, they had simply tried to do too much and the results were less than they wanted.
Flood-infested structures were designed as angular to counterbalance Flood biomass, as well as provide surfaces for the game's artificial intelligence to exploit and move on. New additions were designed to be multi-purpose; exploding "growth pods" that spew Flood forms were added to the game to adjust pacing, provide instant action, and add to the visuals. Endoscopic pictures provided further inspiration. Halo 3 added new capabilities to the Flood, including the ability for the parasite to infect enemies in real time. Bungie used Halo 3's improved capacity for graphics to make a host's sudden transformation into Flood form more dramatic; two different character models and skeletons were fused and swapped in real-time.
## Appearances
### Games
The Flood makes its first appearance more than halfway through Halo: Combat Evolved, during the story mission "343 Guilty Spark". A group of humans fleeing the enemy alien Covenant land on "Halo", a ringworld built by the alien Forerunners. The artificial intelligence Cortana sends the supersoldier Master Chief to find their commander, Jacob Keyes, who disappeared in a swamp while searching for a weapons cache. The Master Chief discovers that the Covenant have accidentally released the Flood. Keyes' squad is turned into soldiers for the parasite, while Keyes is interrogated by the Flood in an attempt to learn the location of Earth and ultimately assimilated. The emergence of the Flood prompts Halo's caretaker artificial intelligence 343 Guilty Spark to enlist the help of the Master Chief in activating Halo's defenses and preventing a Flood outbreak. When Master Chief learns that activating Halo would instead wipe the galaxy of sentient life to prevent the Flood's spread, he and Cortana detonate the human ship Pillar of Autumn's engines, destroying the ring and preventing the Flood from escaping.
The Flood returns in Halo 2 (2004), appearing on another Halo ring called "Delta Halo". The Flood on Delta Halo is led by the Gravemind, a massive Flood intelligence that dwells in the bowels of the ring. Gravemind brings together the Master Chief and the Covenant holy warrior known as the Arbiter and tasks them with stopping the Covenant leadership from activating the ring. In the meantime, Gravemind infests the human ship In Amber Clad and crashes it into the Covenant space station of High Charity. Once there, the Flood sweeps through the city, and the Gravemind captures Cortana. As the Flood spreads, the Covenant form a blockade in an effort to prevent the parasite from leaving its prison.
The Flood reappears in the Halo 3 mission "Floodgate", on board a damaged ship that escapes the quarantine around Delta Halo. While the infestation of Earth is prevented, Master Chief and Arbiter form a tenuous alliance with the Flood to stop the activation of all the Halo rings at the Forerunner installation known as the Ark. Once the threat is stopped, the Gravemind turns on them. The Master Chief fights his way to the center of High Charity, freeing Cortana and destroying the city, but Gravemind attempts to rebuild itself on a Halo under construction at the Ark. Realizing that activating the ring will destroy only the local Flood infestation due to the Ark's location outside of the Milky Way, the Master Chief, Arbiter, and Cortana proceed to Halo's control room, activate the ring, and escape. The Gravemind warns them that his defeat will only delay the Flood, not stop it.
The Flood also makes an appearance in the video game spinoffs Halo Wars and Halo Wars 2. In Halo Wars, they are encountered infesting a Forerunner installation and ultimately annihilated by the actions of the human ship Spirit of Fire's crew. In the Halo Wars 2 expansion "Awakening the Nightmare", the surviving Flood were accidentally released by the Banished while salvaging the wreck of High Charity. The Flood also serves as an enemy in the game's cooperative "Firefight" mode. The Flood also appear in cooperative play in Halo: Spartan Assault.
With Halo 3, the developers added a multiplayer gametype called "Infection", a last man standing mode based on a fan-created scenario where human players defend against Flood-infected players, with each slain human adding to the infected's ranks. The game mode returned in Halo: Reach (2010), Halo 4 (2012), renamed "Flood", The Master Chief Collection (2014), and Halo 5.
### Other appearances
The 2006 anthology The Halo Graphic Novel expands upon the Flood's release during the events of Halo: Combat Evolved in two stories, Last Voyage of the Infinite Succor and "Breaking Quarantine". Whereas the Flood is only hinted at being intelligent in the game, the Halo Graphic Novel shows the Flood has a hive mind, assimilating the knowledge of their hosts rapidly. Lee Hammock, writer of The Last Voyage of the Infinite Succor, described the basis of the story as a way to showcase the true danger of the Flood as an intelligent menace, rather than something the player encounters and shoots. Hammock also stated that the story would prove the intelligent nature of the Flood, and "hopefully euthanize the idea that they are just space zombies". The threat of the Flood is also highlighted in a short story from the Halo Evolutions anthology, "The Mona Lisa," which was later adapted into a motion comic.
The Flood also features heavily in Greg Bear's trilogy of novels, the Forerunner Saga, which takes place thousands of years before the events of the main games. The novel Halo: Silentium reveals that the Flood is what remains of the Precursors, an ancient race that was said to accelerate the evolution of a species and shape galaxies. The Forerunners overthrew the Precursors; on the verge of extinction, some Precursors reduced themselves to a biological powder that would regenerate into their past selves. Time rendered the powder defective, and it became mutagenic, reacting with other living organisms to produce what would eventually mutate into the Flood. The Flood would threaten ancient humanity and then the Forerunners, who ultimately build and activate the Halo Array to stop the parasite's spread.
## Analysis
The name of the Flood is one of many names taken from religious stories in the Halo franchise. The Flood and especially the Gravemind serve as demonic or satanic figures, and the Master Chief's descent into the bowels of Halo to encounter the Flood can be likened to a journey to hell. Academic P.C. Paulissen notes that the name 'Flood' suggests a reference to the biblical deluge, with the Forerunner Ark being shelter from the Flood's destructive and cleansing power akin to the Bible.
The lifecycle and parasitic nature of the Flood has similarities to the behaviors of real-world parasites. The Flood's induced physiological changes recall the modified eyestalks of hosts infected by Leucochloridium paradoxum, or malformed limbs of Ribeiroia-infected amphibians. The Flood's habit of altering its surroundings has parallels to the parasitoid wasp Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga's use of spider's webs for protection.
## Cultural impact
### Merchandise
The Flood have been featured in four series of Halo action figures, produced by Joyride Studios. For Halo: Combat Evolved, Joyride produced a Carrier Form and Infection form bundle. Halo 2's series contains both a human combat form and infection form (bundled with the Master Chief), which were released after the video game. Armchair Empire's review of the figure expressed the sentiment that Joyride's models could not totally capture the ghoulishness texture and detail of the Flood. McFarlane Toys produced action figures for Halo 3, and the third released series featured a human combat form. Other merchandise includes an Xbox 360 Avatar prop, and a limited edition silver-plated statue of Master Chief fighting a Flood form.
### Critical reception
The surprise appearance of the Flood during Halo: Combat Evolved was seen as an important plot twist and a scary moment even after repeat playthroughs of the game. Gamasutra, writing about video game plots, gives the example of the Flood not only as an important reversal to the story of Halo, but an example of how games are made more interesting by twists in the plot. Rolling Stone and Kotaku credited the appearance of the Flood as an excellent way the game kept players on their toes, forcing them to adjust their strategies; Rolling Stone called the twist as shocking "as if, several levels into a game of Pac-Man, the dots suddenly began to attack you". IGN described Flood as one of their favorite video game monsters of all time, stating that "We like the Flood, but we hate them so very much."
Despite the positive acclaim in Halo, the response to the presence of the Flood in Halo 2 and Halo 3 was mixed. A panel of online reviewers noted that the Flood appeared in Halo 2 for no obvious reasons, and was simply described as "aggravating" to play against. Similarly, reviewers including Victor Godinez of The Dallas Morning News felt that the Flood was too derivative of other sci-fi stereotypes, and functioned as "space zombies". Daniel Weissenberger of Gamecritics.com noted in his review of Halo 3 that even though the Flood looked better than ever, its single strategy of rushing the player proved tedious over time. GamesRadar's Charlie Barratt listed the Flood as the worst part of Halo, contrasting what he considered fun, vibrant and open levels before the Flood's appearance with confined spaces and predictable enemies.
The Flood has been recognized as one of the greatest game villains, making lists of greatest villains and enemies from Wizard Magazine, GameDaily, Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition, PC World, and Electronic Gaming Monthly. MTV considered Flood possession in Halo 3 as a "great gaming moment" of 2007, stating that "with the power of the Xbox 360's graphics, this reanimation comes to vivid, distressing life, more memorably than it had in the earlier games. Here are the zombies of gaming doing what they do worst. [...] It's grisly and unforgettable." IGN listed the Flood as the 45th best video game villain, describing it as one of the most hated video game villains.
|
8,894,671 |
1956 FA Cup final
| 1,172,057,356 |
Football match between Manchester City and Birmingham City
|
[
"1955–56 in English football",
"1956 sports events in London",
"Birmingham City F.C. matches",
"Events at Wembley Stadium",
"FA Cup finals",
"Manchester City F.C. matches",
"May 1956 sports events in the United Kingdom"
] |
The 1956 FA Cup final was the final match of the 1955–56 staging of English football's primary cup competition, the Football Association Challenge Cup, better known as the FA Cup. The showpiece event was contested between Manchester City and Birmingham City at Wembley Stadium in London on Saturday 5 May 1956. Two-time winners Manchester City were appearing in their sixth final, whereas Birmingham City were seeking to win the competition for the first time, having lost their only previous final in 1931.
Each club needed to win five matches to reach the final. Manchester City's victories were close affairs, each settled by the odd goal, and they needed a replay to defeat fifth-round opponents Liverpool. Birmingham City made more comfortable progress: they scored eighteen goals while conceding only two, and won each match at the first attempt despite being drawn to play on their opponents' ground in every round. They became the first team to reach an FA Cup final without playing at home.
Birmingham City entered the match as favourites, in a contest billed as a contrast of styles. Watched by a crowd of 100,000 and a television audience of five million, Manchester City took an early lead through Joe Hayes, but Noel Kinsey equalised midway through the first half. Second half goals from Jack Dyson and Bobby Johnstone gave Manchester City a 3–1 victory. The match is best remembered for the heroics of Manchester City goalkeeper, Bert Trautmann, who continued playing despite breaking a bone in his neck in a collision with Birmingham City's Peter Murphy. Due to his heroics, the game is often referred to as "the Trautmann final".
## Route to the final
### Manchester City
As both Birmingham City and Manchester City were First Division clubs, they entered the competition in the third round. Manchester City's cup run started with a home tie against Blackpool. The visitors took the lead after only 10 seconds (their fastest goal ever), but midway through the match, fog enveloped Maine Road. The match was abandoned during the second half, immediately after City had scored an equalising goal, and replayed the following Wednesday; City won 2–1. In the fourth round Manchester City faced Southend United at Roots Hall. The Essex club's ground had only opened five months previously, and was suffering from drainage problems. Torrential rainfall meant that in the week before the match a trench was dug across the pitch, and sand added. Though Southend were a Third Division team, their familiarity with the uneven pitch meant the match was closely contested. Southend pressured the Manchester City goal, requiring Bert Trautmann to make several saves, but Joe Hayes scored the only goal of the game on a City counter-attack to earn a fifth-round tie against Liverpool.
In the fifth-round match, the teams saw out a 0–0 draw at Maine Road, and the match was replayed at Anfield. Goals from Jack Dyson and Bobby Johnstone gave Manchester City a 2–1 lead, but the game finished in controversial circumstances when the referee blew his whistle for full time as Liverpool's Billy Liddell was bearing down on goal. Liddell put the ball in the net, but unbeknown to him the goal did not count as the match was already over. In the quarter final Manchester City again played opposition from Liverpool, facing Everton at Maine Road. Trailing 1–0 at half-time after a Jimmy Harris goal, City overcame the deficit in the second half with goals from Hayes and Johnstone. Further controversy followed in the semi-final against Tottenham Hotspur, when in the final minutes of the match, with the score at 1–0 to Manchester City, Tottenham were denied a penalty after goalkeeper Trautmann grabbed forward George Robb's leg. No further goalscoring opportunities occurred, and City hung on for the victory.
### Birmingham City
Manager Arthur Turner called on his team to match their Third Division opponents Torquay United for fighting spirit and to produce a "90-minute performance". The players complied; leading 4–0 at half-time, they finished as comfortable 7–1 winners. In the fourth round, Leyton Orient, who had beaten Birmingham at the same stage four years earlier, posed more of a potential problem. In reality the win was equally comfortable: Eddy Brown added two goals to his hat-trick at Torquay. A tight local derby game followed on a snow-covered frozen pitch at The Hawthorns. In the first half, goalkeeper Gil Merrick and his defence did well to keep West Bromwich Albion out; Trevor Smith had to clear a Ronnie Allen header from under the crossbar. In the second half, Birmingham wasted several chances before a one-two with Brown allowed Peter Murphy to score from the edge of the penalty area.
In the sixth round, Birmingham faced Arsenal on a muddy pitch. In order to relieve the tension on the way to important matches, manager Turner used to encourage the players to sing. Scotsman Alex Govan's contribution, Harry Lauder's rousing "Keep right on to the end of the road", was adopted by his teammates. As the team coach approached Highbury with the windows wound down, the fans joined in, continuing their rendition during the game. After first-half goals from Gordon Astall and Murphy, Birmingham went 3–0 up through Brown with twenty minutes left. Two minutes later, Arsenal scored from 30 yards (27 m), Birmingham were unsettled, and Merrick needed to make a fine save from Vic Groves to prevent a second Arsenal goal. Turner felt the motivation from such a powerful song played a significant part in the day's victory.
Semi-final opponents Sunderland found Birmingham without "hard-man" left-half Roy Warhurst, who had injured a thigh against Arsenal, but in Jack Badham they had an effective replacement. The club's official history describes this as "probably the finest team performance against top class opposition ever produced" by a Birmingham team. They attacked from the kick-off and nullified Sunderland's pressure and the threat of Len Shackleton. Noel Kinsey scored early and the second goal came from a passing move down the left side finished by Astall. As Sunderland threw everyone forward, which left them open at the back, Brown picked up a long through ball and lobbed the goalkeeper. Astall said afterwards that he was surprised they had not scored five, and Brown wrote in his newspaper column:
> Now Sunderland found out how hard it is to score against this terrific defence of ours. Not for nothing have we scored 18 goals against two (both of them freaks) conceded in five ties all away from home. What can I say to do justice to that brilliant goalkeeper Gil Merrick, to wonderful young Trevor Smith and to the matchless Jeff Hall and Ken Green? Once again they mixed the old cement and constructed that brilliant wall of a defence. Sunderland would have needed to call in a firm of demolition contractors to destroy it.
Birmingham City thus reached the final without playing a single tie at home, a feat which had never previously been accomplished.
## Build-up
The 1956 final was the second time that Birmingham had reached the showpiece match, having lost 2–1 to West Bromwich Albion in 1931. Manchester City were appearing in the final for the sixth time, and for the second consecutive year. They had won the cup twice previously (in 1904 and 1934), and had been beaten in the final three times (in 1926, 1933 and 1955). Though Birmingham had less pedigree in the competition, the press viewed them as favourites. The Daily Telegraph contrasted Birmingham's "dazzling Cup run" with the manner in which Manchester City "scraped through", describing the Midlanders as "firm favourites". Interviews with players were typically bullish in tone. Manchester City's Bobby Johnstone opined that "Even an unbiased fan must regard Manchester City with favour", whereas Birmingham's Len Boyd gauged opinion quite differently: "They say Birmingham City are the hottest Cup favourites since Wolves crashed to Portsmouth in 1939".
During the 1950s the FA Cup final was the only football match to be televised nationally, resulting in heightened media attention for the players and clubs involved. The Players' Union successfully requested an additional £5 per man for appearing in a televised match, the first time such appearance money had been paid. Birmingham's players signed an exclusive contract with the BBC committing them to appear only on BBC programmes in the weeks leading up to the final, though their post-match celebration would be covered live by the regional commercial station ATV. The match itself attracted a television audience of five million, a high figure for the period.
Each club received 15,000 tickets for the final from the Football Association. Birmingham distributed their share by ballot among those supporters who had followed the team in the earlier rounds of the competition; 22,000 had attended the semi-final, so many thousands were left disappointed. Of the remaining tickets, 4,640 were allocated to the FA, 40,640 to County Associations, 20,090 to Football League clubs, 2,550 to FA members and 2,080 to the FA Council and stadium authorities. An enquiry into the black market held following the previous year's Cup Final meant ticket touts kept a lower profile than usual. However, in the week leading up to the game, the cheapest standing tickets, originally sold for 3s 6d, were changing hands in Birmingham for twenty times face value, or 35% of a manual worker's weekly earnings.
Manchester City spent the week preceding the final at a training camp in Eastbourne. Two days before the final Bert Trautmann, who had originally arrived in England as a prisoner of war, was named Footballer of the Year. Eight players who had played in the previous year's final were selected in the starting line-up. Press speculation in the run-up to the match pondered which of Don Revie and Bobby Johnstone would be selected, as Johnstone had been suffering from a calf problem. Bill Leivers was also an injury doubt due to a twisted ankle, and Billy Spurdle had a boil on his left arm lanced on the eve of the final. Consequently, the Manchester City line-up was not named until the morning of the match. Leivers was passed fit after having two pain-killing injections, but contrary to press expectations Spurdle missed out. This meant both Revie and Johnstone appeared in the line-up, Johnstone switching to outside right.
Birmingham also had doubts over their selection. Captain Len Boyd had for some time been suffering from a debilitating back problem, and relied on injections to keep him playing. He missed five of the last seven games of the season, but was passed fit on the Wednesday before the game. Fellow wing half Roy Warhurst had injured his thigh in the sixth-round match and played no further part in the season, while Badham, who damaged an ankle three weeks before the final, travelled on the Thursday with the rest of the team to their base in Twyford, Berkshire. Jeff Hall was struggling with a virus. When manager Turner announced his team on the eve of the match, Boyd took Warhurst's position at left-half, Badham, who had proved an able deputy in the semi-final, was omitted, and the inexperienced 22-year-old Johnny Newman came in on the right.
British Railways laid on 38 special trains to take some 19,000 supporters to London, the first of which arrived at St Pancras station from Manchester Central shortly after 3 a.m. For the first time, the official match programmes were on sale from early morning in an attempt to thwart sellers of unofficial versions. The Birmingham Mail set up a temporary press in a Wembley car park to produce a special edition of their Saturday sports paper, the Sports Argus, on blue paper rather than the usual pink. As the teams prepared in the dressing rooms, the crowd was led in communal singing, including songs with resonance for each of the two teams, "She's a lassie from Lancashire" and "Keep right on to the end of the road", and the hymn "Abide with Me", traditionally sung before every FA Cup final. As the teams emerged from the tunnel, Manchester City captain Roy Paul seized one last opportunity to stir emotion within the players by stopping, raising his fist and shouting "If we don't fucking win, you'll get some of this".
## Match
### Summary
Both teams employed the formation typical of the era: two full backs, a centre half, two wing halves, two outside forwards, two inside forwards and a centre forward. However, their tactical approaches differed. Birmingham, described by The Times as using "iron determination, powerful tackling and open direct methods", employed the traditional English approach of getting the ball to the outside-forwards as quickly as possible, whereas Manchester City adopted tactics inspired by the Hungarian team which had soundly beaten England at Wembley three years before. The system involved using Don Revie in a deeper position than a traditional centre-forward in order to draw a defender out of position, and was therefore known as the "Revie Plan". As both teams' first-choice colours were blue, each team wore their change strip to prevent confusion. Manchester City therefore wore maroon stripes, and Birmingham City wore white.
Birmingham won the toss and Manchester City kicked off. The Birmingham goal came under pressure almost immediately. Within a minute a far post cross from Roy Clarke narrowly eluded Hayes. Two corners followed, the second resulting in a shot by Roy Paul. The next attack, in the third minute, resulted in the opening goal. Revie began the move, exchanging passes with Clarke, and back-heeling for the unmarked Hayes to sweep the ball past Gil Merrick to put Manchester City ahead. Birmingham's confidence was shaken, resulting in a series of Manchester City corners and a chance for Hayes, but they fought back to equalise in the 15th minute. Astall slipped the ball to Brown, who helped it forward. It rebounded off a Manchester City defender into the path of Welsh international inside‐forward Noel Kinsey, who fired home via Trautmann's far post. For the remainder of the first half Birmingham had most of the play, exerting pressure on Manchester City full-back Leivers, but were unable to make a breakthrough. Though Birmingham put the ball in the net twice, Brown was adjudged to be offside on both occasions. With Warhurst missing and Boyd out of position and not fully fit, Birmingham's strength and balance was disrupted, leaving them particularly vulnerable to Manchester City's unconventional style.
During the half-time interval, a row erupted between the Birmingham manager and some of his players about their fitness; in the Manchester City dressing room, a heated exchange took place between Barnes and Revie. Barnes had played defensively in the first half to counter the threat of Peter Murphy, but Revie urged him to play further forward. Meanwhile, manager Les McDowall exhorted his players to keep possession and make their opponents chase the ball.
The period immediately after half‐time saw few chances, but then, after just over an hour's play, Manchester City regained their stride and suddenly went two goals ahead. A throw-in to Revie led to interplay on the right wing involving Barnes, Dyson, and Johnstone, resulting in a through-ball which put Dyson clear of the defence to score. Two minutes later, Trautmann collected the ball at the end of a Birmingham attack and kicked the ball long to Dyson, over the heads of the retreating Birmingham players. Dyson flicked the ball on to Bobby Johnstone, who scored Manchester City's third, becoming the first player ever to score in consecutive Wembley finals in the process.
With 17 minutes remaining, a Birmingham chance arose when Murphy outpaced Dave Ewing. Goalkeeper Trautmann dived at the feet of Murphy to win the ball, but in the collision Murphy's right knee hit Trautmann's neck with a forceful blow. Trautmann was knocked unconscious, and the referee stopped play immediately. Trainer Laurie Barnett rushed onto the pitch, and treatment continued for several minutes. No substitutes were permitted, so Manchester City would have to see out the game with ten men if Trautmann was unable to continue. Captain Roy Paul felt certain that Trautmann was not fit to complete the match, and wished to put Roy Little in goal instead. However, Trautmann, dazed and unsteady on his feet, insisted upon keeping his goal. He played out the remaining minutes in great pain, with the Manchester City defenders attempting to clear the ball well upfield or into the stand whenever it came near. Trautmann was called upon to make two further saves to deny Brown and Murphy, the second causing him to recoil in agony due to a collision with Ewing, which required the trainer to revive him.
No further goals were scored, and the referee blew for full time with the final score 3–1 to Manchester City. As the players left the field, the crowd sang a chorus of "For he's a jolly good fellow" in tribute to Trautmann's bravery. Roy Paul led his team up the steps to the royal box to receive Manchester City's third FA Cup. Trautmann's neck continued to cause him pain, and the Duke of Edinburgh commented on its crooked state as he gave Trautmann his winner's medal. Three days later, an examination revealed that Trautmann had broken a bone in his neck.
### Details
## Post-match
Trautmann attended the evening's post-match banquet (where Alma Cogan sang to the players) despite being unable to move his head, and went to bed expecting his 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 in his neck, 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.
When Manchester City's train from London reached Manchester, the team were greeted by cameras from Granada TV and an open-top bus. They embarked on a journey from London Road station to the town hall in Albert Square, taking a route along some of Manchester's main shopping streets. The size and spirit of the crowds led the Manchester Evening Chronicle to make comparisons with VE Day. The boisterousness of the crowds in Albert Square meant the Lord Mayor struggled to make his speech heard above chants of "We want Bert". After the civic reception at the Town Hall and a banquet at a Piccadilly restaurant, the team returned to the open-top bus and headed to Belle Vue Pleasure Gardens, near the club's former home of Hyde Road in east Manchester, where the Chronicle held a function.
An estimated 10,000 people met the Birmingham City party on their return to Snow Hill station. The players, in the first of a convoy of four coaches, waved to the assembled crowds through the open sun-roof as they proceeded to the Council House, where the Lord Mayor welcomed them on behalf of the city. Len Boyd addressed the crowds from the balcony before the coaches continued through the city centre and back to St Andrew's, Birmingham City's home ground. The following Wednesday, a dinner was held to honour the club's achievements. Guests included the 84-year-old Billy Walton, who had joined the club in 1888, six members of Birmingham's 1931 cup final team, and a trade delegation from the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk.
Though the thousands gathered outside the Council House roared "No!" when Boyd said the team felt they had let the supporters down, there were recriminations concerning Birmingham's performance and team selection. The local press suggested that attempts to combat "Wembley nerves" had resulted in an "over-casual approach to the game". The row at half-time had done little for second-half morale, but speaking fifty years later, Gil Merrick placed the blame less on Boyd's questionable fitness than on a failure to discuss how to stop Revie. Alex Govan, convinced that "if Roy Warhurst had been fit then there would only have been one winner", blamed "bad team selection", saying that even without Warhurst he firmly believed "that if Badham had been in we would have won that game. He would never have given Don Revie the room to run the match." Warhurst himself thought the selection of Newman "meant the team had to adapt its style and in the end we used different tactics to those that had been successful all season".
|
31,458,995 |
Adam Eckfeldt
| 1,168,245,948 |
Second chief coiner of the United States Mint
|
[
"1769 births",
"1852 deaths",
"American people of German descent",
"People from Philadelphia",
"People of colonial Pennsylvania",
"United States Mint engravers"
] |
John Adam Eckfeldt (June 15, 1769 – February 6, 1852) was a worker and official during the first years of the United States Mint. A lifelong Philadelphian, Eckfeldt served as the second chief coiner of the Mint, from 1814 until 1839.
Eckfeldt's father owned a large smithy and involved himself in early attempts at American coinage. Adam Eckfeldt built early presses for the Mint, engraved some of its early dies, and was responsible for the designs of early American copper coinage, as well as the 1792 half disme which some authorities consider the first United States coin. He was appointed assistant coiner of the Mint in 1796, and became chief coiner on his predecessor's death in 1814.
Eckfeldt served a quarter century as chief coiner, during which time the Philadelphia Mint moved to new premises. As he set aside unusual coins brought in as bullion, he started the Mint's coin cabinet, which evolved into the National Numismatic Collection. Even after his 1839 retirement, Eckfeldt continued to perform the duties of chief coiner; his death in 1852 caused his replacement, Franklin Peale, to seek an assistant.
## Early life
John Adam Eckfeldt was born in Philadelphia on June 15, 1769, the son of John Jacob Eckfeldt, a large-scale manufacturer of edge-tools and implements. At the time, it was common for those of German descent to bear the first name "John" but be referred to by middle name. The elder Eckfeldt and his wife Maria Magdalena had immigrated from Nuremberg, Bavaria, around 1764. John Jacob Eckfeldt, in his large smithy, made dies for the 1783 coinage under the Articles of Confederation authorized by Philadelphia financier Robert Morris. Adam was his father's apprentice, and became skilled in iron work and machinery.
## Coin designer and Mint official
During Eckfeldt's childhood, the thirteen British colonies along the Atlantic coast of what is now the United States revolted, and so the United States of America secured its independence. After the United States Constitution was ratified, Congress and many government offices came to be housed in Philadelphia, including the newborn Mint of the United States. Adam Eckfeldt built the first screw press for the new facility in 1792, the same year that the Mint Act of 1792 was passed by Congress authorizing a mint, and cut the obverse die for the experimental Birch cent of that year. He also built other machinery for the Mint, and helped superintend the early coining.
In 1792, the Mint acquired three balances from Eckfeldt, who also lent the Mint his lathe (used for turning dies). Eckfeldt is believed to have made the die from which the 1792 half disme, considered by some the first official U.S. coin, was struck—in 1829, a visitor to the Mint met Eckfeldt and later described him as "an artist [who] made the first die used in it". Other later accounts document Eckfeldt's role in this striking: an 1863 auction sold a half disme supposedly given by Eckfeldt to demonstrate his work. Eckfeldt is given as the source for the tradition that the half dismes were struck at the request of President George Washington to be used as presents. Eckfeldt operated his screw press to strike these roughly 1,500 pieces on July 13, 1792. Since the first Philadelphia Mint was still under construction at the time, these coins were produced in the cellar of John Harper, saw maker, at Sixth and Cherry Streets in Philadelphia. In his annual message to Congress late that year, Washington noted the ongoing construction of a mint building and stated: "There has also been a small beginning in the coinage of half dismes, the want of small coins in circulation calling the first attention to them."
Eckfeldt also produced a pattern disme, of which only a few were struck. When the Mint's first cents (produced in 1793) were found to be excessively crude and attracted public ridicule, Eckfeldt was called upon to design replacements. He placed a wreath on the back of the cent instead of the original chain, and placed a trefoil under Liberty's head on the obverse. He also engraved the first half cent dies later the same year.
Eckfeldt continued to work intermittently for the Philadelphia Mint; in 1793, he built a device for automatically feeding planchets into the die collar and ejecting the struck coins, and the mint's records reveal that he did piecework there in July 1795. By October 1795 he was on the mint's payroll, as a die forger and turner, at a salary of \$500 per year. On January 1, 1796, Mint Director Elias Boudinot appointed him as assistant coiner, with the consent of President Washington. His duties in that capacity were broad.
In 1805, at Boudinot's request, Eckfeldt eliminated a security problem for the Mint by renting two houses adjacent to its operations, allowing it to shut an internal alley to public access. The following year, new Mint Director Robert Patterson requested a pay increase of \$200 for Eckfeldt, writing to President Thomas Jefferson that Eckfeldt had "the management of the whole coining department". When the dies used proved too brittle and cracked easily, Eckfeldt came up with the idea of spraying water on the face of the die so the steel would temper evenly.
As a boy, inventor George Escol Sellers knew Eckfeldt; as Sellers's father was partner in a firm which sold machinery to the Mint Bureau, Eckfeldt often dined at his house. In the final years both of the 19th century and of Sellers's life, he published his memoirs, including memories of the first Philadelphia Mint. He recalled in 1812 peering through a window to see cents coined, and Eckfeldt coming into the room to stop the work at the end of the day. Seeing the young Sellers, he had the boy come in, had him place a cent planchet on the press, and struck it for him. Sellers nearly dropped it because it was so hot, and Eckfeldt reminded him it had been cold when placed in the press. Eckfeldt bade him keep the coin until he learned why the cent had become hot, and then he could spend it on candy.
## Chief coiner
On the death of the first chief coiner, Henry Voigt, in early 1814, Eckfeldt was appointed by President James Madison as successor. He served in that capacity for a quarter century. During his tenure, he continued to improve the machinery at the Philadelphia Mint.
Eckfeldt set aside "master coins"—coins struck with extra care using new dies and polished planchets. He also put aside interesting foreign coins sent to the mint as bullion. These pieces became the Mint's Cabinet, or coin collection. To fill gaps in this collection, he used old dies to strike postdated coins. Specialists have discovered that some dies he chose for this purpose had not been used together to strike coins for commerce, thus creating unique specimens. Among the pieces acquired for the Mint was a Brasher doubloon, of which only six are known today. Eckfeldt often spent from his own funds to acquire the coins for the Mint. The collection eventually evolved into the Smithsonian Institution's National Numismatic Collection.
In 1828, Eckfeldt again became involved in the real estate transactions to expand operations at the Philadelphia Mint. For \$1,000, he purchased one of the lots he had rented in 1805. After the mint moved to new premises in the 1830s, Eckfeldt discovered that the lot he had purchased had a cloud, or irregularity, on its title; he was able to clear it and sold it in 1837 for the same sum for which he had bought it. The new mint building was at Juniper and Chestnut Streets, only six blocks from Eckfeldt's home at Juniper and Vine.
Sellers, in his memoirs, described Eckfeldt as "a man of staunch integrity, a cautious, careful, orderly and painstaking man; he was not one of the dashing, pushing, inventive mechanics, though under his care many apparently slight improvements were gradually adopted that in the aggregate amounted to a great deal in the economy of working. He was by no means deficient in inventive ability." Nevertheless, as Eckfeldt aged in the service of the Mint in the late 1820s and into the 1830s, he was reluctant to adopt the innovations being proposed by his fellow Mint officer, Melter and Refiner Franklin Peale. Peale, like Eckfeldt of a mechanical bent, had many suggestions for improvements to the coinage machinery, some of which Eckfeldt adopted. Eckfeldt stated to Sellers, "If Mr. Peale had full swing he would turn everything upside down". According to Sellers, "the giving up of almost life-long pets that had been Mr. Eckfeldt's constant care would naturally go hard, and still harder coming from another department, but as improvements gradually crept in and proved their efficiency Mr. Eckfeldt gave full credit where it belonged, and I remember him becoming quite enthusiastic over the labor saving [in the use of the Contamin portrait lathe] in duplicating working dies".
In 1833, Peale was sent on a tour of European mints and came home with ideas for new machines and innovations, including the introduction of steam power, used at Britain's Royal Mint since 1810 on equipment purchased from the firm of Boulton & Watt. Although Eckfeldt would have preferred to apply steam to the existing coin presses, a new one was built for steam power, and commemorative medals were the first pieces struck by steam at the Philadelphia Mint, in early 1836.
In 1839, Eckfeldt retired after 25 years as chief coiner and over forty as a Mint employee. His fellow officers at the Mint presented him with a gold medal, with silver and bronze duplicates also struck. The obverse was designed by Philadelphia engraver Moritz Fuerst, who sometimes did work for the Mint; the reverse may be by Fuerst or by Peale. Eckfeldt recommended Peale as his successor, and Peale was appointed. Nevertheless, Eckfeldt continued to perform the functions of chief coiner without pay until a few days before his death on February 6, 1852. After Eckfeldt's death, Peale wrote what Taxay terms a "frantic letter" to Mint Director George N. Eckert, seeking the appointment of an assistant. Peale had spent the freed-up time designing and selling medals for private gain.
## Private and family life
Eckfeldt married twice. No children were born of his brief first marriage in 1792 to Maria Hahn, which ended with her death; his second marriage to Margaretta Bausch produced six children. Among them were his daughter Susanna, who married William Ewing DuBois, first curator of the Mint's coin collection. Jacob Reese Eckfeldt, one of Adam's sons, was for forty years (1832–1872) Assayer of the United States Mint. Jacob's son Jacob Branch Eckfeldt exceeded both forebears in time of service, working at the Mint for 64 years, from 1865 to 1929.
Adam Eckfeldt had a taste for horticulture and owned rural property in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, which was inherited by his two sons after his death. He was the first president of the Good Will Fire Company, holding that office for nearly all of his adult life, and designed a system of levers for use in fire engines. A member of Concordia Lodge No. 67 of the Masonic Order from 1795 to 1806, he served as lodge master in 1803; a Chinese export porcelain punch bowl with his name and Masonic symbols survives in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A biographical sketch of Eckfeldt, published in 1897, describes him:
> He was a man of large information on many subjects, possessed an inventive genius, and was enabled to introduce some excellent improvements in minting processes. He was singularly industrious and energetic, and for his social qualities and uprightness was universally respected, and, indeed, beloved by the officers associated with him and the extended circle of his acquaintance.
|
13,554 |
Hamlet
| 1,173,708,746 |
Tragedy by William Shakespeare
|
[
"1600s plays",
"British plays adapted into films",
"English Renaissance plays",
"Fiction about familicide",
"Fiction about purgatory",
"Fiction about regicide",
"Fiction about suicide",
"Fratricide in fiction",
"Ghosts in written fiction",
"Hamlet",
"Kronborg",
"Metafictional plays",
"Plays adapted into operas",
"Plays adapted into radio programs",
"Plays adapted into television shows",
"Plays adapted into video games",
"Plays set in Denmark",
"Plays set in castles",
"Plays set in palaces",
"Poisoning in fiction",
"Revenge plays",
"Shakespearean tragedies",
"Works based on Gesta Danorum"
] |
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet (/ˈhæmlɪt/), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his attempts to exact revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother.
Hamlet is considered among the "most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language", with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others".
There are many works that have been pointed to as possible sources for Shakespeare's play—from ancient Greek tragedies to Elizabethan plays. The editors of the Arden Shakespeare question the idea of "source hunting", pointing out that it presupposes that authors always require ideas from other works for their own, and suggests that no author can have an original idea or be an originator. When Shakespeare wrote, there were many stories about sons avenging the murder of their fathers, and many about clever avenging sons pretending to be foolish in order to outsmart their foes. This would include the story of the ancient Roman, Lucius Junius Brutus, which Shakespeare apparently knew, as well as the story of Amleth, which was preserved in Latin by 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum, and printed in Paris in 1514. The Amleth story was subsequently adapted and then published in French in 1570 by the 16th-century scholar François de Belleforest. It has a number of plot elements and major characters in common with Shakespeare's Hamlet, and lacks others that are found in Shakespeare. Belleforest's story was first published in English in 1608, after Hamlet had been written, though it's possible that Shakespeare had encountered it in the French-language version.
Three different early versions of the play are extant: the First Quarto (Q1, 1603); the Second Quarto (Q2, 1604); and the First Folio (F1, 1623). Each version includes lines and passages missing from the others.
## Characters
- Hamlet – son of the late king and nephew of the present king, Claudius
- Claudius – King of Denmark, Hamlet's uncle and brother to the former king
- Gertrude – Queen of Denmark and Hamlet's mother
- Polonius – chief counsellor to the king
- Ophelia – Polonius's daughter
- Horatio – friend of Hamlet
- Laertes – Polonius's son
- Voltimand and Cornelius – courtiers
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – courtiers, friends of Hamlet
- Osric – a courtier
- Marcellus – an officer
- Barnardo – an officer
- Francisco – a soldier
- Reynaldo – Polonius's servant
- Ghost – the ghost of Hamlet's father
- Fortinbras – prince of Norway
- Gravediggers – a pair of sextons
- Player King, Player Queen, Lucianus, etc. – players
## Plot
### Act I
Prince Hamlet of Denmark is the son of the recently deceased King Hamlet, and nephew of King Claudius, his father's brother and successor. Claudius hastily married King Hamlet's widow, Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, and took the throne for himself. Denmark has a long-standing feud with neighbouring Norway, in which King Hamlet slew King Fortinbras of Norway in a battle some years ago. Although Denmark defeated Norway and the Norwegian throne fell to King Fortinbras's infirm brother, Denmark fears that an invasion led by the dead Norwegian king's son, Prince Fortinbras, is imminent.
On a cold night on the ramparts of Elsinore, the Danish royal castle, the sentries Bernardo and Marcellus discuss a ghost resembling the late King Hamlet which they have recently seen, and bring Prince Hamlet's friend Horatio as a witness. After the ghost appears again, the three vow to tell Prince Hamlet what they have witnessed.
The court gathers the next day, and King Claudius and Queen Gertrude discuss affairs of state with their elderly adviser Polonius. Claudius grants permission for Polonius's son Laertes to return to school in France, and he sends envoys to inform the King of Norway about Fortinbras. Claudius also questions Hamlet regarding his continuing to grieve for his father, and forbids him to return to his university in Wittenberg. After the court exits, Hamlet despairs of his father's death and his mother's hasty remarriage. Learning of the ghost from Horatio, Hamlet resolves to see it himself.
As Polonius's son Laertes prepares to depart for France, Polonius offers him advice that culminates in the maxim "to thine own self be true." Polonius's daughter, Ophelia, admits her interest in Hamlet, but Laertes warns her against seeking the prince's attention, and Polonius orders her to reject his advances. That night on the rampart, the ghost appears to Hamlet, tells the prince that he was murdered by Claudius, and demands that Hamlet avenge the murder. Hamlet agrees, and the ghost vanishes. The prince confides to Horatio and the sentries that from now on he plans to "put an antic disposition on", or act as though he has gone mad. Hamlet forces them to swear to keep his plans for revenge secret; however, he remains uncertain of the ghost's reliability.
### Act II
Ophelia rushes to her father, telling him that Hamlet arrived at her door the prior night half-undressed and behaving erratically. Polonius blames love for Hamlet's madness and resolves to inform Claudius and Gertrude. As he enters to do so, the king and queen are welcoming Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two student acquaintances of Hamlet, to Elsinore. The royal couple has requested that the two students investigate the cause of Hamlet's mood and behaviour. Additional news requires that Polonius wait to be heard: messengers from Norway inform Claudius that the king of Norway has rebuked Prince Fortinbras for attempting to re-fight his father's battles. The forces that Fortinbras had conscripted to march against Denmark will instead be sent against Poland, though they will pass through Danish territory to get there.
Polonius tells Claudius and Gertrude his theory regarding Hamlet's behaviour, and then speaks to Hamlet in a hall of the castle to try to learn more. Hamlet feigns madness and subtly insults Polonius all the while. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive, Hamlet greets his "friends" warmly but quickly discerns that they are there to spy on him for Claudius. Hamlet admits that he is upset at his situation but refuses to give the true reason, instead remarking "What a piece of work is a man". Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell Hamlet that they have brought along a troupe of actors that they met while travelling to Elsinore. Hamlet, after welcoming the actors and dismissing his friends-turned-spies, asks them to deliver a soliloquy about the death of King Priam and Queen Hecuba at the climax of the Trojan War. Hamlet then asks the actors to stage The Murder of Gonzago, a play featuring a death in the style of his father's murder. Hamlet intends to study Claudius's reaction to the play, and thereby determine the truth of the ghost's story of Claudius's guilt.
### Act III
Polonius forces Ophelia to return Hamlet's love letters to the prince while he and Claudius secretly watch in order to evaluate Hamlet's reaction. Hamlet is walking alone in the hall as the King and Polonius await Ophelia's entrance. Hamlet muses on thoughts of life versus death. When Ophelia enters and tries to return Hamlet's things, Hamlet accuses her of immodesty and cries "get thee to a nunnery", though it is unclear whether this, too, is a show of madness or genuine distress. His reaction convinces Claudius that Hamlet is not mad for love. Shortly thereafter, the court assembles to watch the play Hamlet has commissioned. After seeing the Player King murdered by his rival pouring poison in his ear, Claudius abruptly rises and runs from the room; for Hamlet, this is proof of his uncle's guilt.
Gertrude summons Hamlet to her chamber to demand an explanation. Meanwhile, Claudius talks to himself about the impossibility of repenting, since he still has possession of his ill-gotten goods: his brother's crown and wife. He sinks to his knees. Hamlet, on his way to visit his mother, sneaks up behind him but does not kill him, reasoning that killing Claudius while he is praying will send him straight to heaven while his father's ghost is stuck in purgatory. In the queen's bedchamber, Hamlet and Gertrude fight bitterly. Polonius, spying on the conversation from behind a tapestry, calls for help as Gertrude, believing Hamlet wants to kill her, calls out for help herself.
Hamlet, believing it is Claudius, stabs wildly, killing Polonius, but he pulls aside the curtain and sees his mistake. In a rage, Hamlet brutally insults his mother for her apparent ignorance of Claudius's villainy, but the ghost enters and reprimands Hamlet for his inaction and harsh words. Unable to see or hear the ghost herself, Gertrude takes Hamlet's conversation with it as further evidence of madness. After begging the queen to stop sleeping with Claudius, Hamlet leaves, dragging Polonius's corpse away.
### Act IV
Hamlet jokes with Claudius about where he has hidden Polonius's body, and the king, fearing for his life, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to accompany Hamlet to England with a sealed letter to the English king requesting that Hamlet be executed immediately.
Unhinged by grief at Polonius's death, Ophelia wanders Elsinore. Laertes arrives back from France, enraged by his father's death and his sister's madness. Claudius convinces Laertes that Hamlet is solely responsible, but a letter soon arrives indicating that Hamlet has returned to Denmark, foiling Claudius's plan. Claudius switches tactics, proposing a fencing match between Laertes and Hamlet to settle their differences. Laertes will be given a poison-tipped foil, and, if that fails, Claudius will offer Hamlet poisoned wine as a congratulation. Gertrude interrupts to report that Ophelia has drowned, though it is unclear whether it was suicide or an accident caused by her madness.
### Act V
Horatio has received a letter from Hamlet, explaining that the prince escaped by negotiating with pirates who attempted to attack his England-bound ship, and the friends reunite offstage. Two gravediggers discuss Ophelia's apparent suicide while digging her grave. Hamlet arrives with Horatio and banters with one of the gravediggers, who unearths the skull of a jester from Hamlet's childhood, Yorick. Hamlet picks up the skull, saying "Alas, poor Yorick" as he contemplates mortality. Ophelia's funeral procession approaches, led by Laertes. Hamlet and Horatio initially hide, but when Hamlet realizes that Ophelia is the one being buried, he reveals himself, proclaiming his love for her. Laertes and Hamlet fight by Ophelia's graveside, but the brawl is broken up.
Back at Elsinore, Hamlet explains to Horatio that he had discovered Claudius's letter with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's belongings and replaced it with a forged copy indicating that his former friends should be killed instead. A foppish courtier, Osric, interrupts the conversation to deliver the fencing challenge to Hamlet. Hamlet, despite Horatio's pleas, accepts it. Hamlet does well at first, leading the match by two hits to none, and Gertrude raises a toast to him using the poisoned glass of wine Claudius had set aside for Hamlet. Claudius tries to stop her but is too late: she drinks, and Laertes realizes the plot will be revealed. Laertes slashes Hamlet with his poisoned blade. In the ensuing scuffle, they switch weapons, and Hamlet wounds Laertes with his own poisoned sword. Gertrude collapses and, claiming she has been poisoned, dies. In his dying moments, Laertes reconciles with Hamlet and reveals Claudius's plan. Hamlet rushes at Claudius and kills him. As the poison takes effect, Hamlet, hearing that Fortinbras is marching through the area, names the Norwegian prince as his successor. Horatio, distraught at the thought of being the last survivor and living whilst Hamlet does not, says he will commit suicide by drinking the dregs of Gertrude's poisoned wine, but Hamlet begs him to live on and tell his story. Hamlet dies in Horatio's arms, proclaiming "the rest is silence". Fortinbras, who was ostensibly marching towards Poland with his army, arrives at the palace, along with an English ambassador bringing news of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's deaths. Horatio promises to recount the full story of what happened, and Fortinbras, seeing the entire Danish royal family dead, takes the crown for himself and orders a military funeral to honour Hamlet.
## Date
"Any dating of Hamlet must be tentative", states the New Cambridge editor, Phillip Edwards. MacCary suggests 1599 or 1600; James Shapiro offers late 1600 or early 1601; Wells and Taylor suggest that the play was written in 1600 and revised later; the New Cambridge editor settles on mid-1601; the New Swan Shakespeare Advanced Series editor agrees with 1601; Thompson and Taylor, tentatively ("according to whether one is the more persuaded by Jenkins or by Honigmann") suggest a terminus ad quem of either Spring 1601 or sometime in 1600.
The earliest date estimate relies on Hamlet's frequent allusions to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, itself dated to mid-1599. The latest date estimate is based on an entry, of 26 July 1602, in the Register of the Stationers' Company, indicating that Hamlet was "latelie Acted by the Lo: Chamberleyne his servantes".
In 1598, Francis Meres published his Palladis Tamia, a survey of English literature from Chaucer to its present day, within which twelve of Shakespeare's plays are named. Hamlet is not among them, suggesting that it had not yet been written. As Hamlet was very popular, Bernard Lott, the series editor of New Swan, believes it "unlikely that he [Meres] would have overlooked ... so significant a piece".
The phrase "little eyases" in the First Folio (F1) may allude to the Children of the Chapel, whose popularity in London forced the Globe company into provincial touring. This became known as the War of the Theatres, and supports a 1601 dating. Katherine Duncan-Jones accepts a 1600–01 attribution for the date Hamlet was written, but notes that the Lord Chamberlain's Men, playing Hamlet in the 3000-capacity Globe, were unlikely to be put to any disadvantage by an audience of "barely one hundred" for the Children of the Chapel's equivalent play, Antonio's Revenge; she believes that Shakespeare, confident in the superiority of his own work, was making a playful and charitable allusion to his friend John Marston's very similar piece.
A contemporary of Shakespeare's, Gabriel Harvey, wrote a marginal note in his copy of the 1598 edition of Chaucer's works, which some scholars use as dating evidence. Harvey's note says that "the wiser sort" enjoy Hamlet, and implies that the Earl of Essex—executed in February 1601 for rebellion—was still alive. Other scholars consider this inconclusive. Edwards, for example, concludes that the "sense of time is so confused in Harvey's note that it is really of little use in trying to date ". This is because the same note also refers to Spenser and Watson as if they were still alive ("our flourishing metricians"), but also mentions "Owen's new epigrams", published in 1607.
## Texts
Three early editions of the text, each different, have survived, making attempts to establish a single "authentic" text problematic.
- First Quarto (Q1): In 1603 the booksellers Nicholas Ling and John Trundell published, and Valentine Simmes printed, the so-called "bad" first quarto, under the name The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke. Q1 contains just over half of the text of the later second quarto.
- Second Quarto (Q2): In 1604 Nicholas Ling published, and James Roberts printed, the second quarto, under the same name as the first. Some copies are dated 1605, which may indicate a second impression; consequently, Q2 is often dated "1604/5". Q2 is the longest early edition, although it omits about 77 lines found in F1 (most likely to avoid offending James I's queen, Anne of Denmark).
- First Folio (F1): In 1623 Edward Blount and William and Isaac Jaggard published The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke in the First Folio, the first edition of Shakespeare's Complete Works.
This list does not include three additional early texts, John Smethwick's Q3, Q4, and Q5 (1611–37), which are regarded as reprints of Q2 with some alterations.
Early editors of Shakespeare's works, beginning with Nicholas Rowe (1709) and Lewis Theobald (1733), combined material from the two earliest sources of Hamlet available at the time, Q2 and F1. Each text contains material that the other lacks, with many minor differences in wording: scarcely 200 lines are identical in the two. Editors have combined them in an effort to create one "inclusive" text that reflects an imagined "ideal" of Shakespeare's original. Theobald's version became standard for a long time, and his "full text" approach continues to influence editorial practice to the present day. Some contemporary scholarship, however, discounts this approach, instead considering "an authentic Hamlet an unrealisable ideal. ... there are texts of this play but no text". The 2006 publication by Arden Shakespeare of different Hamlet texts in different volumes is perhaps evidence of this shifting focus and emphasis. Other editors have continued to argue the need for well-edited editions taking material from all versions of the play. Colin Burrow has argued that "most of us should read a text that is made up by conflating all three versions ... it's about as likely that Shakespeare wrote: "To be or not to be, ay, there's the point" [in Q1], as that he wrote the works of Francis Bacon. I suspect most people just won't want to read a three-text play ... [multi-text editions are] a version of the play that is out of touch with the needs of a wider public."
Traditionally, editors of Shakespeare's plays have divided them into five acts. None of the early texts of Hamlet, however, were arranged this way, and the play's division into acts and scenes derives from a 1676 quarto. Modern editors generally follow this traditional division but consider it unsatisfactory; for example, after Hamlet drags Polonius's body out of Gertrude's bedchamber, there is an act-break after which the action appears to continue uninterrupted.
Q1 was discovered in 1823. Only two copies are extant. According to Jenkins, "The unauthorized nature of this quarto is matched by the corruption of its text." Yet Q1 has value: it contains stage directions (such as Ophelia entering with a lute and her hair down) that reveal actual stage practices in a way that Q2 and F1 do not; it contains an entire scene (usually labelled 4.6) that does not appear in either Q2 or F1; and it is useful for comparison with the later editions. The major deficiency of Q1 is in the language: particularly noticeable in the opening lines of the famous "To be, or not to be" soliloquy: "To be, or not to be, aye there's the point. / To die, to sleep, is that all? Aye all: / No, to sleep, to dream, aye marry there it goes." However, the scene order is more coherent, without the problems of Q2 and F1 of Hamlet seeming to resolve something in one scene and enter the next drowning in indecision. New Cambridge editor Kathleen Irace has noted that "Q1's more linear plot design is certainly easier [...] to follow [...] but the simplicity of the Q1 plot arrangement eliminates the alternating plot elements that correspond to Hamlet's shifts in mood."
Q1 is considerably shorter than Q2 or F1 and may be a memorial reconstruction of the play as Shakespeare's company performed it, by an actor who played a minor role (most likely Marcellus). Scholars disagree whether the reconstruction was pirated or authorised. It is suggested by Irace that Q1 is an abridged version intended especially for travelling productions, thus the question of length may be considered as separate from issues of poor textual quality. Editing Q1 thus poses problems in whether or not to "correct" differences from Q2 and F. Irace, in her introduction to Q1, wrote that "I have avoided as many other alterations as possible, because the differences...are especially intriguing...I have recorded a selection of Q2/F readings in the collation." The idea that Q1 is not riddled with error but is instead eminently fit for the stage has led to at least 28 different Q1 productions since 1881. Other productions have used the probably superior Q2 and Folio texts, but used Q1's running order, in particular moving the to be or not to be soliloquy earlier. Developing this, some editors such as Jonathan Bate have argued that Q2 may represent "a 'reading' text as opposed to a 'performance' one" of Hamlet, analogous to how modern films released on disc may include deleted scenes: an edition containing all of Shakespeare's material for the play for the pleasure of readers, so not representing the play as it would have been staged.
## Analysis and criticism
### Critical history
From the early 17th century, the play was famous for its ghost and vivid dramatisation of melancholy and insanity, leading to a procession of mad courtiers and ladies in Jacobean and Caroline drama. Though it remained popular with mass audiences, late 17th-century Restoration critics saw Hamlet as primitive and disapproved of its lack of unity and decorum. This view changed drastically in the 18th century, when critics regarded Hamlet as a hero—a pure, brilliant young man thrust into unfortunate circumstances. By the mid-18th century, however, the advent of Gothic literature brought psychological and mystical readings, returning madness and the ghost to the forefront. Not until the late 18th century did critics and performers begin to view Hamlet as confusing and inconsistent. Before then, he was either mad, or not; either a hero, or not; with no in-betweens. These developments represented a fundamental change in literary criticism, which came to focus more on character and less on plot. By the 19th century, Romantic critics valued Hamlet for its internal, individual conflict reflecting the strong contemporary emphasis on internal struggles and inner character in general. Then too, critics started to focus on Hamlet's delay as a character trait, rather than a plot device. This focus on character and internal struggle continued into the 20th century, when criticism branched in several directions, discussed in context and interpretation below.
### Dramatic structure
Modern editors have divided the play into five acts, and each act into scenes. The First Folio marks the first two acts only. The quartos do not have such divisions. The division into five acts follows Seneca, who in his plays, regularized the way ancient Greek tragedies contain five episodes, which are separated by four choral odes. In Hamlet the development of the plot or the action are determined by the unfolding of Hamlet's character. The soliloquies do not interrupt the plot, instead they are highlights of each block of action. The plot is the developing revelation of Hamlet's view of what is "rotten in the state of Denmark." The action of the play is driven forward in dialogue; but in the soliloquies time and action stop, the meaning of action is questioned, fog of illusion is broached, and truths are exposed.
The contrast between appearance and reality is a significant theme. Hamlet is presented with an image, and then interprets its deeper or darker meaning. Examples begin with Hamlet questioning the reality of the ghost. It continues with Hamlet's taking on an "antic disposition" in order to appear mad, though he is not. The contrast (appearance and reality) is also expressed in several "spying scenes": Act two begins with Polonius sending Reynaldo to spy on his son, Laertes. Claudius and Polonius spy on Ophelia as she meets with Hamlet. In act two, Claudius asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet. Similarly, the play-within-a-play is used by Hamlet to reveal his step-father's hidden nature.
There is no subplot, but the play presents the affairs of the courtier Polonius, his daughter, Ophelia, and his son, Laertes—who variously deal with madness, love and the death of a father in ways that contrast with Hamlet's. The graveyard scene eases tension prior to the catastrophe, and, as Hamlet holds the skull, it is shown that Hamlet no longer fears damnation in the afterlife, and accepts that there is a "divinity that shapes our ends".
Hamlet's enquiring mind has been open to all kinds of ideas, but in act five he has decided on a plan, and in a dialogue with Horatio he seems to answer his two earlier soliloquies on suicide: "We defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows aught, what is't to leave betimes."
### Length
The First Quarto (1603) text of Hamlet contains 15,983 words, the Second Quarto (1604) contains 28,628 words, and the First Folio (1623) contains 27,602 words. Counting the number of lines varies between editions, partly because prose sections in the play may be formatted with varied lengths. Editions of Hamlet that are created by conflating the texts of the Second Quarto and the Folio are said to have approximately 3,900 lines; the number of lines varies between those editions based on formatting the prose sections, counting methods, and how the editors have joined the texts together. Hamlet is by far the longest play that Shakespeare wrote, and one of the longest plays in the Western canon. It might require more than four hours to stage; a typical Elizabethan play would need two to three hours. It is speculated that the because of the considerable length of Q2 and F1, there was an expectation that those texts would be abridged for performance, or that Q2 and F1 may have been aimed at a reading audience.
That Q1 is so much shorter than Q2 has spurred speculation that Q1 is an early draft, or perhaps an adaptation, a bootleg copy, or a stage adaptation. On the title page of Q2, its text is described as "newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much again as it was." That is probably a comparison to Q1.
### Language
Much of Hamlet's language is courtly: elaborate, witty discourse, as recommended by Baldassare Castiglione's 1528 etiquette guide, The Courtier. This work specifically advises royal retainers to amuse their masters with inventive language. Osric and Polonius, especially, seem to respect this injunction. Claudius's speech is rich with rhetorical figures—as is Hamlet's and, at times, Ophelia's—while the language of Horatio, the guards, and the gravediggers is simpler. Claudius's high status is reinforced by using the royal first person plural ("we" or "us"), and anaphora mixed with metaphor to resonate with Greek political speeches.
Of all the characters, Hamlet has the greatest rhetorical skill. He uses highly developed metaphors, stichomythia, and in nine memorable words deploys both anaphora and asyndeton: "to die: to sleep— / To sleep, perchance to dream". In contrast, when occasion demands, he is precise and straightforward, as when he explains his inward emotion to his mother: "But I have that within which passes show, / These but the trappings and the suits of woe". At times, he relies heavily on puns to express his true thoughts while simultaneously concealing them. Pauline Kiernan argues that Shakespeare changed English drama forever in Hamlet because he "showed how a character's language can often be saying several things at once, and contradictory meanings at that, to reflect fragmented thoughts and disturbed feelings". She gives the example of Hamlet's advice to Ophelia, "get thee to a nunnery", which, she claims, is simultaneously a reference to a place of chastity and a slang term for a brothel, reflecting Hamlet's confused feelings about female sexuality. However Harold Jenkins does not agree, having studied the few examples that are used to support that idea, and finds that there is no support for the assumption that "nunnery" was used that way in slang, or that Hamlet intended such a meaning. The context of the scene suggests that a nunnery would not be a brothel, but instead a place of renunciation and a "sanctuary from marriage and from the world’s contamination". Thompson and Taylor consider the brothel idea incorrect considering that "Hamlet is trying to deter Ophelia from breeding".
Hamlet’s first words in the play are a pun; when Claudius addresses him as "my cousin Hamlet, and my son", Hamlet says as an aside: "A little more than kin, and less than kind."
An unusual rhetorical device, hendiadys, appears in several places in the play. Examples are found in Ophelia's speech at the end of the nunnery scene: "Th'expectancy and rose of the fair state" and "And I, of ladies most deject and wretched". Many scholars have found it odd that Shakespeare would, seemingly arbitrarily, use this rhetorical form throughout the play. One explanation may be that Hamlet was written later in Shakespeare's life, when he was adept at matching rhetorical devices to characters and the plot. Linguist George T. Wright suggests that hendiadys had been used deliberately to heighten the play's sense of duality and dislocation.
Hamlet's soliloquies have also captured the attention of scholars. Hamlet interrupts himself, vocalising either disgust or agreement with himself and embellishing his own words. He has difficulty expressing himself directly and instead blunts the thrust of his thought with wordplay. It is not until late in the play, after his experience with the pirates, that Hamlet is able to articulate his feelings freely.
## Context and interpretation
### Religious
Written at a time of religious upheaval and in the wake of the English Reformation, the play is alternately Catholic (or piously medieval) and Protestant (or consciously modern). The ghost describes himself as being in purgatory and as dying without last rites. This and Ophelia's burial ceremony, which is characteristically Catholic, make up most of the play's Catholic connections. Some scholars have observed that revenge tragedies come from Catholic countries such as Italy and Spain, where the revenge tragedies present contradictions of motives, since according to Catholic doctrine the duty to God and family precedes civil justice. Hamlet's conundrum then is whether to avenge his father and kill Claudius or to leave the vengeance to God, as his religion requires.
Much of the play's Protestant tones derive from its setting in Denmark—both then and now a predominantly Protestant country, though it is unclear whether the fictional Denmark of the play is intended to portray this implicit fact. Dialogue refers explicitly to the German city of Wittenberg where Hamlet, Horatio, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern attend university, implying where the Protestant reformer Martin Luther nailed the Ninety-five Theses to the church door in 1517.
### Philosophical
Hamlet is often perceived as a philosophical character, expounding ideas that are now described as relativist, existentialist, and sceptical. For example, he expresses a subjectivistic idea when he says to Rosencrantz: "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so". The idea that nothing is real except in the mind of the individual finds its roots in the Greek Sophists, who argued that since nothing can be perceived except through the senses—and since all individuals sense, and therefore perceive things differently—there is no absolute truth, but rather only relative truth. The clearest alleged instance of existentialism is in the "to be, or not to be" speech, where Hamlet is thought by some to use "being" to allude to life and action, and "not being" to death and inaction.
Hamlet reflects the contemporary scepticism promoted by the French Renaissance humanist Michel de Montaigne. Prior to Montaigne's time, humanists such as Pico della Mirandola had argued that man was God's greatest creation, made in God's image and able to choose his own nature, but this view was subsequently challenged in Montaigne's Essais of 1580. Hamlet's "What a piece of work is a man" seems to echo many of Montaigne's ideas, and many scholars have discussed whether Shakespeare drew directly from Montaigne or whether both men were simply reacting similarly to the spirit of the times.
### Psychoanalytic
#### Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud’s thoughts regarding Hamlet were first published in his book The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), as a footnote to a discussion of Sophocles’ tragedy, Oedipus Rex, all of which is part of his consideration of the causes of neurosis. Freud does not offer over-all interpretations of the plays, but uses the two tragedies to illustrate and corroborate his psychological theories, which are based on his treatments of his patients and on his studies. Productions of Hamlet have used Freud's ideas to support their own interpretations. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud says that according to his experience "parents play a leading part in the infantile psychology of all persons who subsequently become psychoneurotics," and that "falling in love with one parent and hating the other" is a common impulse in early childhood, and is important source material of "subsequent neurosis". He says that "in their amorous or hostile attitude toward their parents" neurotics reveal something that occurs with less intensity "in the minds of the majority of children". Freud considered that Sophocles’ tragedy, Oedipus Rex, with its story that involves crimes of parricide and incest, "has furnished us with legendary matter which corroborates" these ideas, and that the "profound and universal validity of the old legends" is understandable only by recognizing the validity of these theories of "infantile psychology".
Freud explores the reason "Oedipus Rex is capable of moving a modern reader or playgoer no less powerfully than it moved the contemporary Greeks". He suggests that "It may be that we were all destined to direct our first sexual impulses toward our mothers, and our first impulses of hatred and violence toward our fathers." Freud suggests that we "recoil from the person for whom this primitive wish of our childhood has been fulfilled with all the force of the repression which these wishes have undergone in our minds since childhood."
These ideas, which became a cornerstone of Freud's psychological theories, he named the "Oedipus complex", and, at one point, he considered calling it the "Hamlet complex". Freud considered that Hamlet "is rooted in the same soil as Oedipus Rex." But the difference in the "psychic life" of the two civilizations that produced each play, and the progress made over time of "repression in the emotional life of humanity" can be seen in the way the same material is handled by the two playwrights: In Oedipus Rex incest and murder are brought into the light as might occur in a dream, but in Hamlet these impulses "remain repressed" and we learn of their existence through Hamlet's inhibitions to act out the revenge, while he is shown to be capable of acting decisively and boldly in other contexts. Freud asserts, "The play is based on Hamlet’s hesitation in accomplishing the task of revenge assigned to him; the text does not give the cause or the motive of this." The conflict is "deeply hidden".
Hamlet is able to perform any kind of action except taking revenge on the man who murdered his father and has taken his father's place with his mother—Claudius has led Hamlet to realize the repressed desires of his own childhood. The loathing which was supposed to drive him to revenge is replaced by "self-reproach, by conscientious scruples" which tell him "he himself is no better than the murderer whom he is required to punish". Freud suggests that Hamlet's sexual aversion expressed in his "nunnery" conversation with Ophelia supports the idea that Hamlet is "an hysterical subject".
Freud suggests that the character Hamlet goes through an experience that has three characteristics, which he numbered: 1) "the hero is not psychopathic, but becomes so" during the course of the play. 2) "the repressed desire is one of those that are similarly repressed in all of us." It is a repression that "belongs to an early stage of our individual development". The audience identifies with the character of Hamlet, because "we are victims of the same conflict." 3) It is the nature of theatre that "the struggle of the repressed impulse to become conscious" occurs in both the hero onstage and the spectator, when they are in the grip of their emotions, "in the manner seen in psychoanalytic treatment".
Freud points out that Hamlet is an exception in that psychopathic characters are usually ineffective in stage plays; they "become as useless for the stage as they are for life itself", because they do not inspire insight or empathy, unless the audience is familiar with the character's inner conflict. Freud says, "It is thus the task of the dramatist to transport us into the same illness."
John Barrymore's long-running 1922 performance in New York, directed by Thomas Hopkins, "broke new ground in its Freudian approach to character", in keeping with the post-World War I rebellion against everything Victorian. He had a "blunter intention" than presenting the genteel, sweet prince of 19th-century tradition, imbuing his character with virility and lust.
Beginning in 1910, with the publication of "The Œdipus-Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet's Mystery: A Study in Motive" Ernest Jones—a psychoanalyst and Freud's biographer—developed Freud's ideas into a series of essays that culminated in his book Hamlet and Oedipus (1949). Influenced by Jones's psychoanalytic approach, several productions have portrayed the "closet scene", where Hamlet confronts his mother in her private quarters, in a sexual light. In this reading, Hamlet is disgusted by his mother's "incestuous" relationship with Claudius while simultaneously fearful of killing him, as this would clear Hamlet's path to his mother's bed. Ophelia's madness after her father's death may also be read through the Freudian lens: as a reaction to the death of her hoped-for lover, her father. Ophelia is overwhelmed by having her unfulfilled love for him so abruptly terminated and drifts into the oblivion of insanity. In 1937, Tyrone Guthrie directed Laurence Olivier in a Jones-inspired Hamlet at The Old Vic. Olivier later used some of these same ideas in his 1948 film version of the play.
In the Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages volume on Hamlet, editors Bloom and Foster express a conviction that the intentions of Shakespeare in portraying the character of Hamlet in the play exceeded the capacity of the Freudian Oedipus complex to completely encompass the extent of characteristics depicted in Hamlet throughout the tragedy: "For once, Freud regressed in attempting to fasten the Oedipus Complex upon Hamlet: it will not stick, and merely showed that Freud did better than T.S. Eliot, who preferred Coriolanus to Hamlet, or so he said. Who can believe Eliot, when he exposes his own Hamlet Complex by declaring the play to be an aesthetic failure?" The book also notes James Joyce's interpretation, stating that he "did far better in the Library Scene of Ulysses, where Stephen marvellously credits Shakespeare, in this play, with universal fatherhood while accurately implying that Hamlet is fatherless, thus opening a pragmatic gap between Shakespeare and Hamlet."
Joshua Rothman has written in The New Yorker that "we tell the story wrong when we say that Freud used the idea of the Oedipus complex to understand Hamlet". Rothman suggests that "it was the other way around: Hamlet helped Freud understand, and perhaps even invent, psychoanalysis". He concludes, "The Oedipus complex is a misnomer. It should be called the 'Hamlet complex'."
#### Jacques Lacan
In the 1950s, the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan analyzed Hamlet to illustrate some of his concepts. His structuralist theories about Hamlet were first presented in a series of seminars given in Paris and later published in "Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet". Lacan postulated that the human psyche is determined by structures of language and that the linguistic structures of Hamlet shed light on human desire. His point of departure is Freud's Oedipal theories, and the central theme of mourning that runs through Hamlet. In Lacan's analysis, Hamlet unconsciously assumes the role of phallus—the cause of his inaction—and is increasingly distanced from reality "by mourning, fantasy, narcissism and psychosis", which create holes (or lack) in the real, imaginary, and symbolic aspects of his psyche. Lacan's theories influenced some subsequent literary criticism of Hamlet because of his alternative vision of the play and his use of semantics to explore the play's psychological landscape.
### Feminist
In the 20th century, feminist critics opened up new approaches to Gertrude and Ophelia. New historicist and cultural materialist critics examined the play in its historical context, attempting to piece together its original cultural environment. They focused on the gender system of early modern England, pointing to the common trinity of maid, wife, or widow, with whores outside of that stereotype. In this analysis, the essence of Hamlet is the central character's changed perception of his mother as a whore because of her failure to remain faithful to Old Hamlet. In consequence, Hamlet loses his faith in all women, treating Ophelia as if she too were a whore and dishonest with Hamlet. Ophelia, by some critics, can be seen as honest and fair; however, it is virtually impossible to link these two traits, since 'fairness' is an outward trait, while 'honesty' is an inward trait.
Carolyn Heilbrun's 1957 essay "The Character of Hamlet's Mother" defends Gertrude, arguing that the text never hints that Gertrude knew of Claudius poisoning King Hamlet. This analysis has been praised by many feminist critics, combating what is, by Heilbrun's argument, centuries' worth of misinterpretation. By this account, Gertrude's worst crime is of pragmatically marrying her brother-in-law in order to avoid a power vacuum. This is borne out by the fact that King Hamlet's ghost tells Hamlet to leave Gertrude out of Hamlet's revenge, to leave her to heaven, an arbitrary mercy to grant to a conspirator to murder.
Ophelia has also been defended by feminist critics, most notably Elaine Showalter. Ophelia is surrounded by powerful men: her father, brother, and Hamlet. All three disappear: Laertes leaves, Hamlet abandons her, and Polonius dies. Conventional theories had argued that without these three powerful men making decisions for her, Ophelia is driven into madness. Feminist theorists argue that she goes mad with guilt because, when Hamlet kills her father, he has fulfilled her sexual desire to have Hamlet kill her father so they can be together. Showalter points out that Ophelia has become the symbol of the distraught and hysterical woman in modern culture.
## Influence
Hamlet is one of the most quoted works in the English language, and is often included on lists of the world's greatest literature. As such, it reverberates through the writing of later centuries. Academic Laurie Osborne identifies the direct influence of Hamlet in numerous modern narratives, and divides them into four main categories: fictional accounts of the play's composition, simplifications of the story for young readers, stories expanding the role of one or more characters, and narratives featuring performances of the play.
English poet John Milton was an early admirer of Shakespeare and took evident inspiration from his work. As John Kerrigan discusses, Milton originally considered writing his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) as a tragedy. While Milton did not ultimately go that route, the poem still shows distinct echoes of Shakespearean revenge tragedy, and of Hamlet in particular. As scholar Christopher N. Warren argues, Paradise Lost's Satan "undergoes a transformation in the poem from a Hamlet-like avenger into a Claudius-like usurper," a plot device that supports Milton's larger Republican internationalist project. The poem also reworks theatrical language from Hamlet, especially around the idea of "putting on" certain dispositions, as when Hamlet puts on "an antic disposition," similarly to the Son in Paradise Lost who "can put on / [God's] terrors."
Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, published about 1749, describes a visit to Hamlet by Tom Jones and Mr Partridge, with similarities to the "play within a play". In contrast, Goethe's Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, written between 1776 and 1796, not only has a production of Hamlet at its core but also creates parallels between the ghost and Wilhelm Meister's dead father. In the early 1850s, in Pierre, Herman Melville focuses on a Hamlet-like character's long development as a writer. Ten years later, Dickens's Great Expectations contains many Hamlet-like plot elements: it is driven by revenge-motivated actions, contains ghost-like characters (Abel Magwitch and Miss Havisham), and focuses on the hero's guilt. Academic Alexander Welsh notes that Great Expectations is an "autobiographical novel" and "anticipates psychoanalytic readings of Hamlet itself". About the same time, George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss was published, introducing Maggie Tulliver "who is explicitly compared with Hamlet" though "with a reputation for sanity".
L. Frank Baum's first published short story was "They Played a New Hamlet" (1895). When Baum had been touring New York State in the title role, the actor playing the ghost fell through the floorboards, and the rural audience thought it was part of the show and demanded that the actor repeat the fall, because they thought it was funny. Baum would later recount the actual story in an article, but the short story is told from the point of view of the actor playing the ghost.
In the 1920s, James Joyce managed "a more upbeat version" of Hamlet—stripped of obsession and revenge—in Ulysses, though its main parallels are with Homer's Odyssey. In the 1990s, two novelists were explicitly influenced by Hamlet. In Angela Carter's Wise Children, To be or not to be is reworked as a song and dance routine, and Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince has Oedipal themes and murder intertwined with a love affair between a Hamlet-obsessed writer, Bradley Pearson, and the daughter of his rival. In the late 20th century, David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest draws heavily from Hamlet and takes its title from the play's text; Wallace incorporates references to the gravedigger scene, the marriage of the main character's mother to his uncle, and the re-appearance of the main character's father as a ghost.
> There is the story of the woman who read Hamlet for the first time and said, "I don't see why people admire that play so. It is nothing but a bunch of quotations strung together." — Isaac Asimov, Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, p. vii, Avenal Books, 1970
## Performance history
### Shakespeare's day to the Interregnum
Shakespeare almost certainly wrote the role of Hamlet for Richard Burbage. He was the chief tragedian of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, with a capacious memory for lines and a wide emotional range. Judging by the number of reprints, Hamlet appears to have been Shakespeare's fourth most popular play during his lifetime—only Henry IV Part 1, Richard III and Pericles eclipsed it. Shakespeare provides no clear indication of when his play is set; however, as Elizabethan actors performed at the Globe in contemporary dress on minimal sets, this would not have affected the staging.
Firm evidence for specific early performances of the play is scant. It is sometimes argued that the crew of the ship Red Dragon, anchored off Sierra Leone, performed Hamlet in September 1607; however, this claim is based on a 19th century insert of a 'lost' passage into a period document, and is today widely regarded as a hoax, likely to have been perpetrated by John Payne Collier (not to mention the intrinsic unlikelihood of sailors memorising and performing the play). More credible is that the play toured in Germany within five years of Shakespeare's death, and that it was performed before James I in 1619 and Charles I in 1637. Oxford editor George Hibbard argues that, since the contemporary literature contains many allusions and references to Hamlet (only Falstaff is mentioned more, from Shakespeare), the play was surely performed with a frequency that the historical record misses.
All theatres were closed down by the Puritan government during the Interregnum. Even during this time, however, playlets known as drolls were often performed illegally, including one called The Grave-Makers based on act 5, scene 1 of Hamlet.
### Restoration and 18th century
The play was revived early in the Restoration. When the existing stock of pre-civil war plays was divided between the two newly created patent theatre companies, Hamlet was the only Shakespearean favourite that Sir William Davenant's Duke's Company secured. It became the first of Shakespeare's plays to be presented with movable flats painted with generic scenery behind the proscenium arch of Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre. This new stage convention highlighted the frequency with which Shakespeare shifts dramatic location, encouraging the recurrent criticism of his failure to maintain unity of place. In the title role, Davenant cast Thomas Betterton, who continued to play the Dane until he was 74. David Garrick at Drury Lane produced a version that adapted Shakespeare heavily; he declared: "I had sworn I would not leave the stage till I had rescued that noble play from all the rubbish of the fifth act. I have brought it forth without the grave-digger's trick, Osrick, & the fencing match". The first actor known to have played Hamlet in North America is Lewis Hallam Jr., in the American Company's production in Philadelphia in 1759.
John Philip Kemble made his Drury Lane debut as Hamlet in 1783. His performance was said to be 20 minutes longer than anyone else's, and his lengthy pauses provoked the suggestion by Richard Brinsley Sheridan that "music should be played between the words". Sarah Siddons was the first actress known to play Hamlet; many women have since played him as a breeches role, to great acclaim. In 1748, Alexander Sumarokov wrote a Russian adaptation that focused on Prince Hamlet as the embodiment of an opposition to Claudius's tyranny—a treatment that would recur in Eastern European versions into the 20th century. In the years following America's independence, Thomas Abthorpe Cooper, the young nation's leading tragedian, performed Hamlet among other plays at the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, and at the Park Theatre in New York. Although chided for "acknowledging acquaintances in the audience" and "inadequate memorisation of his lines", he became a national celebrity.
### 19th century
From around 1810 to 1840, the best-known Shakespearean performances in the United States were tours by leading London actors—including George Frederick Cooke, Junius Brutus Booth, Edmund Kean, William Charles Macready, and Charles Kemble. Of these, Booth remained to make his career in the States, fathering the nation's most notorious actor, John Wilkes Booth (who later assassinated Abraham Lincoln), and its most famous Hamlet, Edwin Booth. Edwin Booth's Hamlet at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in 1875 was described as "... the dark, sad, dreamy, mysterious hero of a poem. [... acted] in an ideal manner, as far removed as possible from the plane of actual life". Booth played Hamlet for 100 nights in the 1864/5 season at the Winter Garden Theatre, inaugurating the era of long-run Shakespeare in America.
In the United Kingdom, the actor-managers of the Victorian era (including Kean, Samuel Phelps, Macready, and Henry Irving) staged Shakespeare in a grand manner, with elaborate scenery and costumes. The tendency of actor-managers to emphasise the importance of their own central character did not always meet with the critics' approval. George Bernard Shaw's praise for Johnston Forbes-Robertson's performance contains a sideswipe at Irving: "The story of the play was perfectly intelligible, and quite took the attention of the audience off the principal actor at moments. What is the Lyceum coming to?"
In London, Edmund Kean was the first Hamlet to abandon the regal finery usually associated with the role in favour of a plain costume, and he is said to have surprised his audience by playing Hamlet as serious and introspective. In stark contrast to earlier opulence, William Poel's 1881 production of the Q1 text was an early attempt at reconstructing the Elizabethan theatre's austerity; his only backdrop was a set of red curtains. Sarah Bernhardt played the prince in her popular 1899 London production. In contrast to the "effeminate" view of the central character that usually accompanied a female casting, she described her character as "manly and resolute, but nonetheless thoughtful ... [he] thinks before he acts, a trait indicative of great strength and great spiritual power".
In France, Charles Kemble initiated an enthusiasm for Shakespeare; and leading members of the Romantic movement such as Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas saw his 1827 Paris performance of Hamlet, particularly admiring the madness of Harriet Smithson's Ophelia. In Germany, Hamlet had become so assimilated by the mid-19th century that Ferdinand Freiligrath declared that "Germany is Hamlet". From the 1850s, the Parsi theatre tradition in India transformed Hamlet into folk performances, with dozens of songs added.
### 20th century
Apart from some western troupes' 19th-century visits, the first professional performance of Hamlet in Japan was Otojirō Kawakami's 1903 Shinpa ("new school theatre") adaptation. Tsubouchi Shōyō translated Hamlet and produced a performance in 1911 that blended Shingeki ("new drama") and Kabuki styles. This hybrid-genre reached its peak in Tsuneari Fukuda's 1955 Hamlet. In 1998, Yukio Ninagawa produced an acclaimed version of Hamlet in the style of Nō theatre, which he took to London.
Konstantin Stanislavski and Edward Gordon Craig—two of the 20th century's most influential theatre practitioners—collaborated on the Moscow Art Theatre's seminal production of 1911–12. While Craig favoured stylised abstraction, Stanislavski, armed with his 'system,' explored psychological motivation. Craig conceived of the play as a symbolist monodrama, offering a dream-like vision as seen through Hamlet's eyes alone. This was most evident in the staging of the first court scene. The most famous aspect of the production is Craig's use of large, abstract screens that altered the size and shape of the acting area for each scene, representing the character's state of mind spatially or visualising a dramaturgical progression. The production attracted enthusiastic and unprecedented worldwide attention for the theatre and placed it "on the cultural map for Western Europe".
The first modern dress stagings of Hamlet happened in 1925 in London and then New York. Barry Jackson's Birmingham Repertory Theatre opened their production, directed by H.K. Ayliff at the Kingsway Theatre on August 25, 1925. Ivor Brown reported, "Many of the first night audience came to scoff and remained to hold its breath, to marvel and enjoy. . . .Shakespeare's victory over time and tailoring was swift and sweeping." Horace Brisbin Liveright's modern dress production opened at the Booth Theater in New York on November 9, 1925, the same night that the London production moved to Birmingham. It was known "more dryly, and perhaps with a touch of something more sinister, as 'the plain-clothes Hamlet'" and did not reach the same level of success.
Hamlet is often played with contemporary political overtones. Leopold Jessner's 1926 production at the Berlin Staatstheater portrayed Claudius's court as a parody of the corrupt and fawning court of Kaiser Wilhelm. In Poland, the number of productions of Hamlet has tended to increase at times of political unrest, since its political themes (suspected crimes, coups, surveillance) can be used to comment on a contemporary situation. Similarly, Czech directors have used the play at times of occupation: a 1941 Vinohrady Theatre production "emphasised, with due caution, the helpless situation of an intellectual attempting to endure in a ruthless environment". In China, performances of Hamlet often have political significance: Gu Wuwei's 1916 The Usurper of State Power, an amalgam of Hamlet and Macbeth, was an attack on Yuan Shikai's attempt to overthrow the republic. In 1942, Jiao Juyin directed the play in a Confucian temple in Sichuan Province, to which the government had retreated from the advancing Japanese. In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the protests at Tiananmen Square, Lin Zhaohua staged a 1990 Hamlet in which the prince was an ordinary individual tortured by a loss of meaning. In this production, the actors playing Hamlet, Claudius and Polonius exchanged roles at crucial moments in the performance, including the moment of Claudius's death, at which point the actor mainly associated with Hamlet fell to the ground.
Notable stagings in London and New York include Barrymore's 1925 production at the Haymarket; it influenced subsequent performances by John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier. Gielgud played the central role many times: his 1936 New York production ran for 132 performances, leading to the accolade that he was "the finest interpreter of the role since Barrymore". Although "posterity has treated Maurice Evans less kindly", throughout the 1930s and 1940s he was regarded by many as the leading interpreter of Shakespeare in the United States and in the 1938/39 season he presented Broadway's first uncut Hamlet, running four and a half hours. Evans later performed a highly truncated version of the play that he played for South Pacific war zones during World War II which made the prince a more decisive character. The staging, known as the "G.I. Hamlet", was produced on Broadway for 131 performances in 1945/46. Olivier's 1937 performance at The Old Vic was popular with audiences but not with critics, with James Agate writing in a famous review in The Sunday Times, "Mr. Olivier does not speak poetry badly. He does not speak it at all." In 1937 Tyrone Guthrie directed the play at Elsinore, Denmark, with Laurence Olivier as Hamlet and Vivien Leigh as Ophelia.
In 1963, Olivier directed Peter O'Toole as Hamlet in the inaugural performance of the newly formed National Theatre; critics found resonance between O'Toole's Hamlet and John Osborne's hero, Jimmy Porter, from Look Back in Anger.
Richard Burton received his third Tony Award nomination when he played his second Hamlet, his first under John Gielgud's direction, in 1964 in a production that holds the record for the longest run of the play in Broadway history (137 performances). The performance was set on a bare stage, conceived to appear like a dress rehearsal, with Burton in a black v-neck sweater, and Gielgud himself tape-recorded the voice for the ghost (which appeared as a looming shadow). It was immortalised both on record and on a film that played in US theatres for a week in 1964 as well as being the subject of books written by cast members William Redfield and Richard L. Sterne.
Other New York portrayals of Hamlet of note include that of Ralph Fiennes's in 1995 (for which he won the Tony Award for Best Actor)—which ran, from first preview to closing night, a total of one hundred performances. About the Fiennes Hamlet Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times that it was "... not one for literary sleuths and Shakespeare scholars. It respects the play, but it doesn't provide any new material for arcane debates on what it all means. Instead it's an intelligent, beautifully read ..." Stacy Keach played the role with an all-star cast at Joseph Papp's Delacorte Theater in the early 1970s, with Colleen Dewhurst's Gertrude, James Earl Jones's King, Barnard Hughes's Polonius, Sam Waterston's Laertes and Raul Julia's Osric. Sam Waterston later played the role himself at the Delacorte for the New York Shakespeare Festival, and the show transferred to the Vivian Beaumont Theater in 1975 (Stephen Lang played Bernardo and other roles). Stephen Lang's Hamlet for the Roundabout Theatre Company in 1992 received mixed reviews and ran for sixty-one performances. David Warner played the role with the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in 1965. William Hurt (at Circle Repertory Company off-Broadway, memorably performing "To be, or not to be" while lying on the floor), Jon Voight at Rutgers, and Christopher Walken (fiercely) at Stratford, Connecticut, have all played the role, as has Diane Venora at The Public Theatre. The Internet Broadway Database lists sixty-six productions of Hamlet.
Ian Charleson performed Hamlet from 9 October to 13 November 1989, in Richard Eyre's production at the Olivier Theatre, replacing Daniel Day-Lewis, who had abandoned the production. Seriously ill from AIDS at the time, Charleson died eight weeks after his last performance. Fellow actor and friend, Sir Ian McKellen, said that Charleson played Hamlet so well it was as if he had rehearsed the role all his life; McKellen called it "the perfect Hamlet". The performance garnered other major accolades as well, some critics echoing McKellen in calling it the definitive Hamlet performance.
Keanu Reeves performed Hamlet from 12 January to 4 February 1995 at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre (Winnipeg, Manitoba). The production garnered positive reviews from worldwide media outlets. Directed by Lewis Baumander the lavish production featured a cast of some of Canada's most distinguished classical actors of that period.
### 21st century
Hamlet continues to be staged regularly. Actors performing the lead role have included: Simon Russell Beale, Ben Whishaw, David Tennant, Tom Hiddleston, Angela Winkler, Samuel West, Christopher Eccleston, Maxine Peake, Rory Kinnear, Oscar Isaac, Michael Sheen, Christian Camargo, Paapa Essiedu and Michael Urie.
In May 2009, Hamlet opened with Jude Law in the title role at the Donmar Warehouse West End season at Wyndham's Theatre. The production officially opened on 3 June and ran through 22 August 2009. A further production with Jude Law ran at Elsinore Castle in Denmark from 25–30 August 2009, and then moved to Broadway, and ran for 12 weeks at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York.
In October 2011, a production starring Michael Sheen opened at the Young Vic, in which the play was set inside a psychiatric hospital.
In 2013, American actor Paul Giamatti played the title role of Hamlet in modern dress, at the Yale Repertory Theatre, at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
The Globe Theatre of London initiated a project in 2014 to perform Hamlet in every country in the world in the space of two years. Titled Globe to Globe Hamlet, it began its tour on 23 April 2014, the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, and performed in 197 countries.
Benedict Cumberbatch played the role for a 12-week run in a production at the Barbican Theatre, opening on 25 August 2015. The play was produced by Sonia Friedman, and directed by Lyndsey Turner, with set design by Es Devlin. It was called the "most in-demand theatre production of all time" and sold out in seven hours after tickets went on sale 11 August 2014, more than a year before the play opened.
A 2017 Almeida Theatre production, directed by Robert Icke and starring Andrew Scott, was transferred that same year to the West End's Harold Pinter Theatre.
Tom Hiddleston played the role for a three-week run at Vanbrugh Theatre that opened on 1 September 2017 and was directed by Kenneth Branagh.
In 2018, The Globe Theatre's newly instated artistic director Michelle Terry played the role in a production notable for its gender-blind casting.
A production by Bristol Old Vic starring Billy Howle in title role, Niamh Cusack as Gertrude, Mirren Mack as Ophelia opened on 13 October 2022.
### Film and TV performances
An early film version of Hamlet is Sarah Bernhardt's five-minute film of the fencing scene, which was produced in 1900. The film was an early attempt at combining sound and film; music and words were recorded on phonograph records, to be played along with the film. Silent versions were released in 1907, 1908, 1910, 1913, 1917, and 1920. In the 1921 film Hamlet, Danish actress Asta Nielsen played the role of Hamlet as a woman who spends her life disguised as a man.
Laurence Olivier's 1948 moody black-and-white Hamlet won Best Picture and Best Actor Academy Awards, and is, as of 2020, the only Shakespeare film to have done so. His interpretation stressed the Oedipal overtones of the play, and cast 28-year-old Eileen Herlie as Hamlet's mother, opposite himself, at 41, as Hamlet.
In 1953, actor Jack Manning performed the play in 15-minute segments over two weeks in the short-lived late night DuMont series Monodrama Theater. New York Times TV critic Jack Gould praised Manning's performance as Hamlet.
The 1964 Soviet film Hamlet (Russian: Гамлет) is based on a translation by Boris Pasternak and directed by Grigori Kozintsev, with a score by Dmitri Shostakovich. Innokenty Smoktunovsky was cast in the role of Hamlet.
John Gielgud directed Richard Burton in a Broadway production at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in 1964–65, the longest-running Hamlet in the U.S. to date. A live film of the production was produced using "Electronovision", a method of recording a live performance with multiple video cameras and converting the image to film. Eileen Herlie repeated her role from Olivier's film version as the Queen, and the voice of Gielgud was heard as the ghost. The Gielgud/Burton production was also recorded complete and released on LP by Columbia Masterworks.
The first Hamlet in color was a 1969 film directed by Tony Richardson with Nicol Williamson as Hamlet and Marianne Faithfull as Ophelia.
In 1990 Franco Zeffirelli, whose Shakespeare films have been described as "sensual rather than cerebral", cast Mel Gibson—then famous for the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon movies—in the title role of his 1990 version; Glenn Close—then famous as the psychotic "other woman" in Fatal Attraction—played Gertrude, and Paul Scofield played Hamlet's father.
Kenneth Branagh adapted, directed, and starred in a 1996 film version of Hamlet that contained material from the First Folio and the Second Quarto. Branagh's Hamlet runs for just over four hours. Branagh set the film with late 19th-century costuming and furnishings, a production in many ways reminiscent of a Russian novel of the time; and Blenheim Palace, built in the early 18th century, became Elsinore Castle in the external scenes. The film is structured as an epic and makes frequent use of flashbacks to highlight elements not made explicit in the play: Hamlet's sexual relationship with Kate Winslet's Ophelia, for example, or his childhood affection for Yorick (played by Ken Dodd).
In 2000, Michael Almereyda's Hamlet set the story in contemporary Manhattan, with Ethan Hawke playing Hamlet as a film student. Claudius (played by Kyle MacLachlan) became the CEO of "Denmark Corporation", having taken over the company by killing his brother.
The 2014 Bollywood film Haider is an adaptation set in modern Kashmir.
The Northman, released on 22 April 2022 and directed by the American director Robert Eggers who also co-wrote the script with Icelandic author Sjón, is based in the original Scandinavian legend that inspired Shakespeare to write Hamlet.
## Derivative works
This section is limited to derivative works written for the stage.
Tom Stoppard's 1966 play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead retells many of the events of the story from the point of view of the characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and gives them a backstory of their own. Several times since 1995, the American Shakespeare Center has mounted repertories that included both Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with the same actors performing the same roles in each; in their 2001 and 2009 seasons the two plays were "directed, designed, and rehearsed together to make the most out of the shared scenes and situations".
W. S. Gilbert wrote a short comic play titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in which Hamlet's play is presented as a tragedy written by Claudius in his youth of which he is greatly embarrassed. Through the chaos triggered by Hamlet's staging of it, Guildenstern helps Rosencrantz vie with Hamlet to make Ophelia his bride.
Lee Blessing's Fortinbras is a comical sequel to Hamlet in which all the deceased characters come back as ghosts. The New York Times reviewed the play, saying it is "scarcely more than an extended comedy sketch, lacking the portent and linguistic complexity of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Fortinbras operates on a far less ambitious plane, but it is a ripping yarn and offers Keith Reddin a role in which he can commit comic mayhem".
Caridad Svich's 12 Ophelias (a play with broken songs) includes elements of the story of Hamlet but focuses on Ophelia. In Svich's play, Ophelia is resurrected and rises from a pool of water, after her death in Hamlet. The play is a series of scenes and songs, and was first staged at a public swimming pool in Brooklyn.
David Davalos's Wittenberg is a "tragical-comical-historical" prequel to Hamlet that depicts the Danish prince as a student at Wittenberg University (now known as the University of Halle-Wittenberg), where he is torn between the conflicting teachings of his mentors John Faustus and Martin Luther. The New York Times reviewed the play, saying, "Mr. Davalos has molded a daft campus comedy out of this unlikely convergence," and Nytheatre.com's review said the playwright "has imagined a fascinating alternate reality, and quite possibly, given the fictional Hamlet a back story that will inform the role for the future."
Mad Boy Chronicle by Canadian playwright Michael O'Brien is a dark comedy loosely based on Hamlet, set in Viking Denmark in 999 AD.
|
52,755 |
Final Fantasy VI
| 1,173,139,986 |
1994 video game
|
[
"1994 video games",
"Airships in fiction",
"Android (operating system) games",
"Censored video games",
"Cooperative video games",
"Dystopian video games",
"Fiction about deicide",
"Fiction about rebellions",
"Final Fantasy VI",
"Final Fantasy video games",
"Game Boy Advance games",
"IOS games",
"Multiplayer and single-player video games",
"Nintendo Switch games",
"Nintendo games",
"PlayStation (console) games",
"PlayStation 4 games",
"PlayStation Network games",
"Post-apocalyptic video games",
"Role-playing video games",
"Silicon Graphics",
"Steampunk video games",
"Super Nintendo Entertainment System games",
"Tose (company) games",
"Turn-based role-playing video games",
"Video games about amnesia",
"Video games developed in Japan",
"Video games featuring female protagonists",
"Video games scored by Nobuo Uematsu",
"Video games set on fictional islands",
"Virtual Console games",
"Virtual Console games for Wii U",
"War video games",
"Windows games"
] |
also known as Final Fantasy III from its initial North American release, is a 1994 role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is the sixth main entry in the Final Fantasy series, the final to feature 2D sprite based graphics, and the first to be directed by someone other than series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi; the role was instead filled by Yoshinori Kitase and Hiroyuki Ito. Long-time collaborator Yoshitaka Amano returned as character designer and concept artist, while composer Nobuo Uematsu returned to compose the game's score, which has been released on several soundtrack albums.
Set in a world with technology resembling the Second Industrial Revolution, the game's story follows an expanding cast that includes fourteen permanent playable characters. The narrative deals with the themes of a rebellion against an immoral military dictatorship, pursuit of a magical arms race, use of chemical weapons in warfare, depictions of violent and apocalyptic confrontations, several personal redemption arcs, teenage pregnancy, and the renewal of hope and life itself.
Final Fantasy VI received widespread critical acclaim, particularly for its graphics, soundtrack, story, characters, setting, and mature themes, and won numerous awards. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest video games of all time, and is often cited as a watershed title for the role-playing genre. The game was a commercial success, with the Super NES and PlayStation versions selling over 3.48 million copies worldwide by 2003, as well as over 750,000 copies as part of the Japanese Final Fantasy Collection and the North American Final Fantasy Anthology.
It was ported by Tose with minor differences to the PlayStation in 1999, and the Game Boy Advance in 2006. The Super NES version was rereleased for the Wii's Virtual Console in 2011, and by Nintendo as part of the company's Super NES Classic Edition in 2017. The game was known as Final Fantasy III when it was first released in North America, as the original Final Fantasy II, III, and V had not been released outside Japan at the time (leaving IV as the second title released outside Japan and VI as the third). However, all later versions of the game, other than re-releases of the original version, use the original title.
## Gameplay
Like previous installments, Final Fantasy VI consists of four basic modes of gameplay: an overworld map, town and dungeon field maps, a battle screen, and a menu screen. The overworld map is a scaled-down version of the game's world, which the player uses to direct characters to various locations. As with most games in the series, the three primary means of travel across the overworld are by foot, chocobo, and airship. With a few plot-driven exceptions, enemies are randomly encountered on field maps and on the overworld when traveling by foot. The menu screen is where the player makes such decisions as which characters will be in the traveling party, which equipment they wield, the magic they learn, and the configuration of the gameplay. It is also used to track experience points and levels.
The game's plot develops as the player progresses through towns and dungeons. Town citizens will offer helpful information, and some residents own item or equipment shops. Later in the game, visiting certain towns will activate side-quests. Dungeons appear as a variety of areas, including caves, forests, and buildings. These dungeons often have treasure chests containing rare items that are not available in most stores. Dungeons may feature puzzles and mazes, with some dungeons requiring the player to divide the characters into multiple parties which must work together to advance through the dungeon.
### Combat
Combat in Final Fantasy VI is menu-based, in which the player selects an action from a list of such options as Fight, Magic, and Item. A maximum of four characters may be used in battles, which are based on the series' traditional Active Time Battle (ATB) system, first featured in Final Fantasy IV. Under this system, each character has an action bar that replenishes itself at a rate dependent on their speed statistic. When a character's action bar is filled, the player may assign an action. In addition to standard battle techniques, each character possesses a unique special ability. For example, Locke possesses the ability to steal items from enemies, while Celes' Runic ability allows her to absorb most magical attacks cast until her next turn.
Another element is the Desperation Attack, a powerful attack substitution that occasionally appears when a character's health is low. Similar features appear in later Final Fantasy titles under a variety of different names, including Limit Breaks, Trances, and Overdrives. Characters are rewarded for victorious battles with experience points and money, called gil (Gold Piece (GP) in the original North American localization). When characters attain a certain number of experience points, they gain a level, which increases their statistics. An additional player may play during battle scenarios, with control of individual characters assigned from the configuration menu.
### Customization
Characters in Final Fantasy VI can be equipped with a variety of weapons, armor and, particular to this entry, powerful accessories known as "Relics". Weapons and armor increase combat capability, mostly by increasing statistics and adding beneficial effects to attacks. By comparison, Relics have a variety of uses and effects, are almost entirely interchangeable among party members, and are extended in sophistication to alter basic battle commands and exceed normal limitations of the game's systems.
Although in VI only two playable characters start the game with the ability to use magic, magic may later be taught to almost all other playable characters through the game's introduction of magicite and the Espers that magicite shards contain. "Espers" are the game's incarnation of the series' trope of "summons", powerful monstrous beings, many of which are recurring throughout the series, such as Ifrit, Shiva, Bahamut and Odin. Besides those returning from previous entries, VI features approximately two dozen of them in total, with more added to later versions of the game.
The setting and plot of the game revolve heavily around Espers and their remains when deceased, which are referred to as "magicite". Each piece of magicite has a specific set of magic spells that a character can learn when they are equipped with it in the menu. If used often enough, these abilities become permanently accessible, even if the magicite is removed. Additionally, some pieces of magicite grant a statistical bonus to a character when they gain a level. Finally, when a character equips a piece of magicite, they may summon the corresponding Esper during battle.
## Plot
### Setting
Instead of the strictly medieval fantasy settings featured in previous Final Fantasy titles, Final Fantasy VI is set in a world that also has prominent steampunk influences. The structure of society is similar to that of the latter half of the 19th century, with opera and the fine arts serving as recurring motifs throughout the game, and a level of technology comparable to that of the Second Industrial Revolution. During the first half of the game, the planet is referred to as the World of Balance, and is divided into three lush continents. The northern continent is punctuated by a series of mountain ranges, the southern continent has been mostly subjugated by the cruel Gestahl Empire, and the eastern continent is home to the Veldt, a massive wilderness inhabited by monsters from all over the world. An apocalyptic event mid-game transforms the planet into the World of Ruin; its withering landmasses are fractured into numerous islands surrounding a larger continent.
The game alludes to a conflict known as the "War of the Magi", which occurred one thousand years prior to the beginning of the game. In this conflict, three quarreling entities known as the "Warring Triad" used innocent humans as soldiers by transforming them into enslaved magical beings called Espers. The Triad realized their wrongdoings; they freed the espers and sealed their own powers inside three stone statues. As a precaution, the espers sealed off both the statues and themselves from the realm of humans. The concept of magic gradually faded to myth as mankind built a society extolling science and technology. At the game's opening, the Empire has taken advantage of the weakening barrier between the human and esper domains, capturing several espers in the process. Using these espers as a power source, the Empire has created "Magitek", a craft that combines magic with machinery (including mechanical infantry) and infuses humans with magical powers. The Empire is opposed by the Returners, a rebel organization seeking to free the subjugated lands.
### Characters
Final Fantasy VI features fourteen permanent playable characters, the most of any game in the main series, as well as several secondary characters who are only briefly controlled by the player. The starting character, Terra Branford, is a reserved half-human, half-esper girl who spent most of her life as a slave to the Empire, thanks to a mind-controlling device, and is unfamiliar with love. Other primary characters include Locke Cole, a treasure hunter and rebel sympathizer with a powerful impulse to protect women; Celes Chere, a former general of the Empire, who joined the Returners after being jailed for questioning imperial practices; Edgar Roni Figaro, a consummate womanizer and the king of Figaro, who claims allegiance to the Empire while secretly supplying aid to the Returners; Sabin Rene Figaro, Edgar's independent brother, who fled the royal court to hone his martial arts skills; Cyan Garamonde, a loyal knight to the kingdom of Doma who lost his family and friends when Kefka poisoned the kingdom's water supply; Setzer Gabbiani, a habitual gambler, thrill seeker, and owner of the world's only known airship; Shadow, a ninja mercenary who offers his services to both the Empire and the Returners; Relm Arrowny, a young but tough artistic girl with magical powers; Strago Magus, Relm's elderly grandfather and a Blue Mage; Gau, a feral child surviving since infancy on the Veldt; Mog, a pike-toting Moogle from the mines of Narshe; Umaro, a savage but loyal sasquatch also from Narshe, talked into joining the Returners through Mog's persuasion; and Gogo, a mysterious, fully shrouded master of the art of mimicry.
Most of the main characters in the game hold a significant grudge against the Empire and, in particular, Kefka Palazzo, who serves as one of the game's main antagonists along with Emperor Gestahl. The clownish Kefka became the first experimental prototype of a line of magically empowered soldiers called Magitek Knights, rendering him insane; his actions throughout the game reflect his demented nature. The supporting character Ultros serves as a recurring villain and comic relief. A handful of characters have reappeared in later games. Final Fantasy SGI, a short tech demo produced for the Silicon Graphics Onyx workstation, featured polygon-based 3D renderings of Locke, Terra, and Shadow.
### Story
In the town of Narshe, a young woman named Terra Branford participates in an Imperial mission to seize a powerful magical creature known as an Esper encased in ice. Upon locating it, a magical reaction occurs between Terra and the Esper; as a result, the soldiers accompanying Terra are killed and Terra is knocked unconscious. Upon awakening, Terra is informed that the Empire had been using a device called a "slave crown" to control her actions. With the crown now removed, Terra cannot remember anything more than her name and her rare ability to use magic unaided. Terra is then chased out of town by the Narshe guard, but is saved by Locke Cole, a "treasure hunter" and a member of an organization known as the "Returners". Locke and Terra leave Narshe, meeting other Returners from the kingdom of Figaro along the way including Figaro Kingdom's King and his brother, Edgar and Sabin. Meeting up with their leader, Bannon, she agrees to help in their revolution against the Empire, despite not knowing where she stands in the world. The Returners learn that Imperial soldiers have taken the town of South Figaro. Locke opts to infiltrate the town to slow the Imperial forces down, while the rest of the group heads back to Narshe. Gaining new allies along the way (including former Imperial Genreal Celes Chere, Cyan Garamonde, and Gau), they learn that the Imperial forces, led by the Emperor's Court Mage Kefka Palazzo, are planning another attempt to seize the frozen Esper. After repelling Kefka's attack, Terra experiences another magical reaction with the frozen Esper; she transforms into a creature resembling an Esper and flies off with a blood curdling scream to another continent. The group splits up with some staying in Narshe to beef up its defenses, and the others heading out to find Terra. Upon locating Terra, the party is confronted by an Esper named Ramuh, who summoned Terra with his power to help keep her safe. He informs the group that Terra may require the assistance of another Esper imprisoned in the Imperial capital city of Vector. With the ports all closed, their only hope is to meet with and convince the owner of the world's only airship, Setzer Gabbiani. They enact a plan when Setzer leaves a letter stating he plans to marry Opera superstar, Maria. It's mentioned by the Opera House's Impresario that Celes is a dead ringer for Maria, so they use her as a decoy in the performance later that evening. Setzer appears during the climax of the performance and kidnaps Celes believing her to be Maria. Afterwards, Celes sneaks the rest of the party aboard the airship and the party talks with Setzer, convincing him to help them.
At Vector, the party attempts to locate the other Espers. During the raid, they find Kefka, who mutters something about reviving the "Warring Triad". The party evades Kefka and then rescues several Espers, who are dying from Magitek experiments and choose instead to offer their lives to the party by transforming into magicite. The head of the Magitek Research Facility, Cid, arrives and realizes that the Magicite left behind by dying espers is a more effective method of gaining their power. Kefka learns of this as well, and attempts to lie to the party that Celes was an Imperial infiltrator. Locke hesitates at this, and the party sans Celes is knocked out. Celes attempts to transport Kefka and his troops away to prove to Locke she's not a traitor, but Locke awakens afterwards and did not see this. The group promptly escapes and returns to Terra. They observe a reaction between her and the magicite "Maduin". The reaction calms Terra and restores her memory; she reveals that she is the half-human, half-Esper child of Maduin and a human woman named Madeleine. She also gains the ability to transform into her Esper form for short periods of time without losing control. With this revelation, the Returners ask Terra to convince the Espers to join their cause. To do this, they travel to the sealed gate between the human and Esper worlds. However, unbeknownst to the party, the Empire follows close behind them so that they also can use Terra to gain access to the Esper World. The gate opens, and multiple Espers escape and go on a rampage destroying much of Vector. They flee to the mountains just north of the small town of Thamasa. The Empire claims to have lost the will to fight and works together with the Returners to seek the Espers' forgiveness. They travel to Thamasa along with General Leo, a returning Celes, and a hired mercenary ninja named Shadow. Before the trip to Thamasa, Locke tries to get Celes to forgive him for doubting her, but she walks away saying nothing. The next day, they disembark to Thamasa. Along the way, Terra talks with General Leo about her time in the Empire and if she could learn to love someone as a half-human, half-esper. Leo is unable to provide her with clear answers. Upon arriving on the eastern continent, Celes accompanies General Leo, while Shadow accompanies Terra and Locke to Thamasa, meeting a local elder named Strago Magus and his adopted granddaughter, Relm Arrowny. The two help the Returners to find the Espers. After explaining the situation to the Espers, they all return to Thamasa to meet with General Leo. Leo helps to achieve peace with the Espers, when Kefka suddenly appears with Imperial troops. He knocks out the Returners, turns all of the Espers to Magicite, and then slaughters General Leo. The remaining Returners who stayed in Vector arrive at Thamasa and explains that the truce was all a ruse by the Emperor. Meanwhile, The Emperor and Kefka infiltrate the sealed gate and find their way into the Esper World. There, Emperor Gestahl and Kefka retrieve the statues of the Warring Triad, who are essentially the three gods of magic in the world. Using the Triad's power, The two raises a landmass called the Floating Continent. The group fights their way through the Imperial Air Force onboard the airship and lands on the Floating Continent. There, they confront Emperor Gestahl and Kefka at the peak, whereupon Kefka, whose mental state has progressively declined over the course of the story, usurps and murders Gestahl in a fit of rage. Kefka then tampers with the alignment of the statues, which upsets the balance of magic and the aftershocks of which destroys most of the surface of the world, turning it into the World of Ruin. The party manages to barely escape the Floating Continent but Kefka turns a newfound ability called the "Light of Judgement" on the party, slicing the airship in two, and scattering them to the corners of the world. He then causes more destruction with the Light of Judgement worldwide.
One year later, Celes awakens on a deserted island. She learns that Kefka is using the Warring Triad to rule the world in a tyrannical god-like manner, destroying whole villages who oppose him and causing all life to slowly wither away. She adopts Cid as her grandather and soon after, Cid falls ill. Depending on the player's actions, Cid either dies or lives. In any case, Celes finds a raft Cid built for her to escape the island on. After Celes escapes the island, she searches for her lost comrades, who are found scattered throughout the ruined world. They come to terms with their situation and resolve to confront Kefka and end his reign, with Terra additionally accepting her half-Esper heritage and finding a new purpose in life in fighting for a better future. The group infiltrates Kefka's tower and destroys the Warring Triad before confronting Kefka himself, who has descended into nihilism as a result of his madness and plans to destroy all of existence as a means of self-validation. The group successfully destroys Kefka in battle, at which point magic and Espers disappear from the world; despite this, Terra is able to survive by hanging onto the human half of her existence. The group escapes from Kefka's tower as it collapses and flies away while watching as the world rejuvenates itself.
## Development
### Creation
Final Fantasy VI entered development after the release of its predecessor V in December 1992. The development of the game took just one year to complete. Series creator and director Hironobu Sakaguchi could not be as intimately involved as in previous installments due to his other projects and his promotion to Executive Vice President of the company in 1991. For that reason, he became the producer and split director responsibilities for VI up between Yoshinori Kitase and Hiroyuki Ito: Kitase was in charge of event production and the scenario, while Ito handled all battle aspects. Sakaguchi supervised Kitase's cutscene direction and ensured that the project would coalesce as a whole. The idea behind the story of VI was that every character is the protagonist. All members of the development team contributed ideas for characters and their "episodes" for the overall plot in what Kitase described as a "hybrid process". Consequently, Terra and Locke were conceived by Sakaguchi; Celes and Gau by Kitase; Shadow and Setzer by graphic director Tetsuya Nomura; and Edgar and Sabin by field graphic designer Kaori Tanaka. Then it was Kitase's task to unite the story premise provided by Sakaguchi with all the individual ideas for character episodes to create a cohesive narrative. The scenario of Final Fantasy VI was written by a group of four or five people, among them Kitase who provided key elements of the story, such as the opera scene and Celes' suicide attempt, as well as all of Kefka's appearances.
Regular series character designer Yoshitaka Amano's concept art became the basis for the models in the full motion videos produced for the game's PlayStation re-release. Tetsuya Takahashi, one of the graphic directors, drew the imperial Magitek Armors seen in the opening scene. By doing so, he disregarded Sakaguchi's intention to reuse the regular designs from elsewhere in the game. The sprite art for the characters' in-game appearance was drawn by Kazuko Shibuya. While in the earlier installments, the sprites were less detailed on the map than in battle, Final Fantasy VI's had an equally high resolution regardless of the screen. This enabled the use of animations depicting a variety of movements and facial expressions. Though it was not the first game to utilize the Super NES' Mode 7 graphics, Final Fantasy VI made more extensive use of them than its predecessors. For instance, unlike both IV and V, the world map is rendered in Mode 7, which lends a somewhat three-dimensional perspective to an otherwise two-dimensional game.
### Localization
The original North American localization and release of Final Fantasy VI by Square for the Super NES featured several changes from the original Japanese version. The most obvious of these is the change of the game's title from Final Fantasy VI to Final Fantasy III; because only two games of the series had been localized in North America at the time, VI was distributed as Final Fantasy III to maintain naming continuity. Unlike Final Fantasy IV (which was first released in North America as Final Fantasy II), there are no major changes to gameplay, though several changes of contents and editorial adjustments exist in the English script. In a January 1995 interview with Super Play magazine, translator Ted Woolsey explained that "there's a certain level of playfulness and ... sexuality in Japanese games that just doesn't exist here [in the USA], basically because of Nintendo of America's rules and guidelines". Consequently, objectionable graphics (e.g. nudity) were censored and building signs in towns were changed (such as Bar being changed to Café), as well as religious allusions (e.g. the spell Holy was renamed Pearl).
Also, some direct allusions to death, killing actions, and violent expressions, as well as offensive words have been replaced by softer expressions. For example, after Edgar, Locke and Terra flee on chocobos from Figaro Castle, Kefka orders two Magitek Armored soldiers to chase them by shouting "Go! KILL THEM!", in the Japanese version. It was translated as "Go! Get them!" Also, when Imperial Troopers burn Figaro Castle, and Edgar claims Terra is not hidden inside the castle, Kefka replies "then you can burn to death" in the Japanese version, which was replaced in the English version by "Then welcome to my barbecue!". Similarly, as Magitek soldiers watch Edgar and his guests escape on Chocobos, Kefka swears in Japanese, which was translated by Ted Woolsey as "Son of a submariner!". The localization also featured changes to several names, such as "Tina" being changed to "Terra". Finally, dialogue text files had to be shortened due to the limited data storage space available on the game cartridge's read-only memory. As a result, additional changes were rendered to dialogue in order to compress it into the available space.
The PlayStation re-release featured only minor changes to the English localization. The title of the game was reverted to Final Fantasy VI from Final Fantasy III, to unify the numbering scheme of the series in North America and Japan with the earlier release of VII. A few item and character names were adjusted, as in the expansion of "Fenix Down" to "Phoenix Down". Unlike the PlayStation re-release of Final Fantasy IV included in the later Final Fantasy Chronicles compilation, the script was left essentially unchanged. The Game Boy Advance re-release featured a new translation by a different translator, Tom Slattery. This translation preserved most of the character names, location names, and terminology from the Woolsey translation, but changed item and spell names to match the conventions used in more recent titles in the series. The revised script preserved certain quirky lines from the original while changing or editing others, and it cleared up certain points of confusion in the original translation. The Wii Virtual Console release used the Final Fantasy III name of the Super NES game.
### Music
The soundtrack for Final Fantasy VI was composed by long-time series contributor Nobuo Uematsu. The score consists of themes for each major character and location, as well as music for standard battles, fights with boss enemies and for special cutscenes. The extensive use of leitmotif is one of the defining points of the audio tracks. The "Aria di Mezzo Carattere" is one of the latter tracks, played during a cutscene involving an opera performance. This track features an unintelligible synthesized "voice" that harmonizes with the melody, as technical limitations for the SPC700 sound format chip prevented the use of an actual vocal track (although some developers eventually figured out how to overcome the limitation a few years later, and in the Pixel Remaster, it is voiced by opera singers). The orchestral album Final Fantasy VI Grand Finale features an arranged version of the aria, using Italian lyrics performed by Svetla Krasteva with an orchestral accompaniment. This version is also found in the ending full motion video of the game's Sony PlayStation re-release, with the same lyrics but a different musical arrangement. In addition, the album Orchestral Game Concert 4 includes an extended version of the opera arranged and conducted by Kōsuke Onozaki and performed by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, featuring Wakako Aokimi, Tetsuya Ōno, and Hiroshi Kuroda on vocals. It was also performed at the "More Friends" concert at the Gibson Amphitheatre in 2005 using a new English translation of the lyrics, an album of which is now available. "Dancing Mad", accompanying the game's final battle with Kefka, is 17 minutes long and contains an organ cadenza, with variations on Kefka's theme. The "Ending Theme" combines every playable character theme into one composition lasting over 21 minutes.
The original score was released on three compact discs in Japan as Final Fantasy VI: Original Sound Version. A version of this album was later released in North America as Final Fantasy III: Kefka's Domain. This version of the album is the same as its Japanese counterpart, except for different packaging and small differences in the translation of some track names between the album and newer releases. Additionally, Final Fantasy VI: Grand Finale features eleven tracks from the game, arranged by Shirō Sagisu and Tsuneyoshi Saito and performed by the Ensemble Archi Della Scala and Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano (Milan Symphony Orchestra). Piano Collections: Final Fantasy VI, a second arranged album, features thirteen tracks from the game, performed for piano by Reiko Nomura. More recently, "Dancing Mad", the final boss theme from Final Fantasy VI, has been performed at Play! A Video Game Symphony in Stockholm, Sweden on June 2, 2007, by the group Machinae Supremacy.
Nobuo Uematsu's former rock band, The Black Mages, released a progressive metal version of Dancing Mad on their eponymous first album in 2003. Their third album, subtitled Darkness and Starlight, is so named after its premiere track: a rock opera version of the entire opera from FFVI, including the Aria di Mezzo Carattere performed by Etsuyo Ota.
In 2012, a Kickstarter campaign for OverClocked ReMix was funded at \$153,633 for the creation of a multiple CD album of remixes of the music from VI. Andrew Aversa directed the creation of the album, Balance and Ruin, which contains 74 tracks from 74 artists, each with its own unique style. The album is free and available at the OverClocked ReMix website. Video Games Live composer Jillian Aversa, Andrew Aversa's wife, created a music video tribute to Aria di Mezzo Carattere, together with cellist Tina Guo, expanding on the arrangement from Balance and Ruin.
## Re-releases
### PlayStation
Final Fantasy VI was ported to the PlayStation by Tose and re-released in Japan and North America in 1999. In Japan, it was available in both a standalone release and as part of Final Fantasy Collection, while in North America it was available only as part of Final Fantasy Anthology. In Europe it was sold only as a standalone release. Fifty thousand limited-edition copies were also released in Japan and included a Final Fantasy-themed alarm clock.
Final Fantasy VI's PlayStation port is very similar to the original Japanese Super Famicom release. With the exception of the addition of two full motion video opening and ending sequences and new screen-transition effects used for the start and end of battles, the graphics, music and sound are left unchanged from the original version. The only notable changes to gameplay (in addition to loading times not present in the cartridge versions) involve the correction of a few software bugs from the original and the addition of a new "memo save" feature, allowing players to quickly save their progress to the PlayStation's RAM. The re-release included other special features, such as a bestiary and an artwork gallery. The port was re-released in December 2012 as part of the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Ultimate Box package in Japan.
Final Fantasy VI was re-released as a PSone Classic in 2011: in Japan on April 20, in PAL territories on June 2 and in North America on December 6.
The "Pixel Remaster" series version of Final Fantasy VI was released for PlayStation 4 in April 2023.
### Nintendo consoles
After the PlayStation, Tose then ported the game to the Game Boy Advance, on which it was released as Final Fantasy VI Advance. It was released in Japan by Square Enix on November 30, 2006, with Nintendo handling publishing in North America on February 5, 2007, and in Europe on July 6. It was the last game to be released on the Game Boy Advance in Asia, as well as the last one to be published by Nintendo on the system. It includes additional gameplay features, slightly improved visuals, and a new translation that follows Japanese naming conventions for the spells and monsters. It does not, however, have the full-motion videos from the PlayStation version of the game. Four new espers appear in Advance: Leviathan, Gilgamesh, Cactuar, and Diabolos. Two new areas include the Dragons' Den dungeon, which includes the Kaiser Dragon, a monster coded, but not included, in the original, and a "Soul Shrine", a place where the player can fight monsters continuously. Three new spells also appear, and several bugs from the original are fixed. In addition, similarly to the other handheld Final Fantasy re-releases, a bestiary and a music player are included. Even in the Japanese version, the music player is in English and uses the American names, e.g. Strago over Stragus. The package features new artwork by series veteran and original character and image designer Yoshitaka Amano.
The original Super Famicom version was released for the Wii Virtual Console in Japan on March 15, 2011, in PAL territories (Europe and Australia) on March 18, and in North America on June 30. The game was released in the West with its original North American title of Final Fantasy III. The Super Famicom version was later released on the Wii U Virtual Console in Japan. Square Enix released the Game Boy Advance version on the Wii U Virtual Console in Japan in December 2015.
Nintendo re-released Final Fantasy VI worldwide in September 2017 as part of the company's Super NES/Super Famicom Classic Edition.
The "Pixel Remaster" series version of Final Fantasy VI was released worldwide for Nintendo Switch in April 2023.
### Mobile platforms and PC
Ports of Final Fantasy VI for Android and iOS mobile operating systems were also published in 2014, for Android on January 15, and for iOS on February 6, with features such as new high-resolution graphics with sprites designed by Kazuko Shibuya, who did the original game's artwork, movement in eight directions, and auto-battle.
A Windows PC port, itself a port of the Android version, was released for Windows PC via Steam on December 16, 2015. Another port from the "Pixel Remaster" line was released on Steam on February 23, 2022. The "Pixel Remaster" series features new 16-bit sprites, new soundtracks, and a return to the game's originally released content. No added content from any of the ported versions appears in any of the "Pixel Remasters".
## Reception
### Contemporary
Final Fantasy VI received critical acclaim and was commercially successful in Japan upon release. In mid-1994, Square's publicity department reported that the game had sold 2.55 million copies in Japan, where it became the best-selling video game of 1994. In the United States, where it went on sale in the last quarter of 1994, it was the top-selling Super NES game in October and became the year's eighth best-selling Super NES cartridge. Despite this, it was not a commercial success in that region, according to Sakaguchi. As of March 2003, the game had shipped 3.48 million copies worldwide, with 2.62 million of those copies being shipped in Japan and 860,000 abroad. Final Fantasy Collection sold over 400,000 copies in 1999, making it the 31st-best-selling release of that year in Japan. Final Fantasy Anthology has sold approximately 364,000 copies in North America. Final Fantasy VI Advance sold over 223,000 copies in Japan by the end of 2006, one month after release.
GamePro rated it 4.5 out of 5 in graphics and a perfect 5.0 in sound, control, and fun factor, stating that "characters, plotlines, and multiple-choice scenarios all combine to form one fantastic game!" The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly each granted it a unanimous score of 9 out of 10 (36 out of 40) and their "Game of the Month" award, commenting that it had set the new standard for excellence in RPGs. They particularly praised the graphics, music, and the strong emotional involvement of the story. It won several awards from Electronic Gaming Monthly in their 1994 video game awards, including Best Role-Playing Game, Best Japanese Role-Playing Game, and Best Music for a Cartridge-Based Game. Additionally, they ranked the game ninth in their 1997 list of the 100 greatest console games of all time. Famitsu scored it 37 out of 40, making it one of their two highest-rated games of 1994 (along with Ridge Racer). For their part, Nintendo Power declared the game "the RPG hit of the decade", noting its improved sound and graphics over its predecessors, and the game's broadened thematic scope. Moreover, they suggested that "with so much story and variation of play ... fans may become lost in the world for months at a time". Nintendo Power also opined that the game plot was "not particularly inventive" and the "story is often sappy–not written for an American audience".
In 1997, Nintendo Power ranked it as the eighth greatest Nintendo game, saying it "had everything you could want—heroes, world-shattering events, magic, mindless evil—plus Interceptor the wonder dog!" The same year, GamePro said it "still remains one of the most fun, innovative, and challenging RPGs to date". In 1996, Next Generation said the scene in which Terra cares for a village of orphaned children "can perhaps be safely named as the series' finest hour... no other game series has tackled such big issues, or reached such a level of emotional depth and complexity".
### Retrospective
Final Fantasy Collection received 54 out of 60 points from Weekly Famitsu, scored by a panel of six reviewers. IGN described the graphics of the PlayStation re-release as "beautiful and stunning", reflecting that, at the time of its release, "Final Fantasy III... represented everything an RPG should be", inspiring statistic growth systems that would later influence titles like Wild Arms and Suikoden. Moreover, they praised its gameplay and storyline, claiming that these aspects took "all... preceding RPG concepts and either came up with something completely new or refined them enough to make them its own", creating an atmosphere in which "[players] won't find it difficult to get past the simplistic graphics or seemingly out-dated gameplay conventions and become involved". RPGamer gave a perfect rating to both the original game and its PlayStation re-release, citing its gameplay as "self-explanatory enough that most any player could pick up the game and customize their characters' equipment", while praising its music as "a 16-bit masterpiece".
The game's release for the Game Boy Advance also garnered praise. the Game Boy Advance re-release was named eighth best Game Boy Advance game of all time in IGN's feature reflecting on the Game Boy Advance's long lifespan. Official Nintendo Magazine ranked the GBA version of the game 32nd on a list of greatest Nintendo games in 2009. Final Fantasy VI is often regarded as one of the best titles in the series and one of the best role-playing video games ever created according to multiple websites. Readers of the Japanese magazine Famitsu voted it as the 25th best game of all time. In an updated version of the "Top 100" list in 2007, IGN ranked Final Fantasy VI as the ninth top game of all time, above all other Final Fantasy games in the series. They continued to cite the game's character development, and especially noted Kefka as one of the most memorable villains in RPG history. Nintendo Power listed the ending to Final Fantasy VI as one of the best finales, citing the narrative and cast variety. Time Extension included the game on their "Best JRPGs of All Time" list.
## Legacy
Following Final Fantasy VI, Square began testing for its next entry Final Fantasy VII on the N64, but technical issues, escalating cartridge costs and the higher storage capacity of CD technology persuaded Square to move VII and all their subsequent titles onto the PlayStation. During early testing on 3D development software, the team rendered a battle involving Final Fantasy VI characters Terra, Locke and Shadow. The decision to move to PlayStation soured the relations between Square and Nintendo. Due to this, Final Fantasy VI was the last series title to release on a Nintendo platform until Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles came out on the Nintendo GameCube in 2003. It was also the last new mainline Final Fantasy game to come to a Nintendo platform until 2018 when the abridged Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition was released on Nintendo Switch, followed by the subsequent releases of Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, X, X-2 and XII the following year. Final Fantasy VI was included in the Super NES Classic Edition under its original titling as Final Fantasy III for the North American and European release in September 2017.
In 2010, Square Enix producer Shinji Hashimoto said that the development of a remake of Final Fantasy VI for the Nintendo DS was "undecided" due to "technical issues". Later, however, Square discussed remaking VI as well as V for the Nintendo 3DS. Tetsuya Nomura, then directing Final Fantasy VII Remake, expressed interest in remaking V and VI.
Final Fantasy VI has made multiple appearances in the Final Fantasy Trading Card Game.
## See also
- List of Square Enix video game franchises
|
15,641,381 |
Flocke
| 1,154,318,189 |
Female polar bear born in captivity at the Nuremberg Zoo in Germany
|
[
"2007 animal births",
"Celebrity animals",
"Female mammals",
"Individual animals in Germany",
"Individual polar bears",
"Nuremberg"
] |
Flocke () is a female polar bear who was born in captivity at the Nuremberg Zoo in Nuremberg, Germany on 11 December 2007. A few weeks after her birth, she was removed from her mother's care after concerns were raised for her safety. Although the zoo had established a strict non-interference policy with its animals, officials chose to raise the cub by hand. This decision came at a time when the zoo was receiving negative attention from the media after another female polar bear reportedly ate her newly born cubs.
Like Knut, a captive-born and handraised polar bear at the Berlin Zoo, Flocke ("flake" in German) quickly became a media sensation. After she made her debut to the public on 8 April 2008, her name was trademarked by the zoo and her image appeared on toys and in advertisements throughout the city. The zoo announced in May 2008 that United Nations Environment Program chief Achim Steiner would be Flocke's official patron with the hope of using the bear as an ambassador to encourage awareness of climate change. In late 2008, a Russian-born male polar bear named Rasputin was introduced to Flocke's enclosure in the hopes that she would gain valuable socializing skills with a member of her own species. In April 2010, both bears were relocated to Marineland in southern France.
## Infancy and controversy
Flocke was born at the Nuremberg Zoo on 11 December 2007 to Vera (born 2002 in Moscow) and Felix (born 2001 in Vienna). Felix also mated with Vera's sister Vilma, who gave birth some weeks earlier in November to what officials thought were two cubs. Zookeepers, enforcing a strict non-interference policy, were not able to determine exactly how many cubs were born. The zoo reportedly did not wish to create a media circus similar to the one that surrounded Knut, an orphaned polar bear at the Berlin Zoo who became an international celebrity the previous year. Days after the zoo reaffirmed its non-interference policy, mass circulation daily Bild ran a story with a headline reading "Why Won't Anyone Save the Cute Baby Knuts in Nuremberg Zoo?"
At the beginning of January, zoo keepers noticed that Vilma appeared nervous; she was seen agitatedly scratching at her feedbox, and there was no further sign of her cubs. It is believed that she devoured them. When asked for a reason, Nuremberg zoo director Dag Encke stated that they could have been ill, a circumstance under which polar bears in the wild often eat their young. The zoo quickly faced harsh criticism throughout Germany and from the worldwide media for appearing to allow the cubs' death. The director of the German Animal Protection Society said the zoo had acted irresponsibly and that "it was the ethical responsibility of the management to give the polar bear cubs a chance of life. Using the argument 'That's Nature' as an excuse for intervening far too late is cynical and inappropriate." Angry visitors gathered in front of the polar bear enclosure and shouted "Rabenmutter" (literally, "raven mother", meaning "evil mother") every time Vilma appeared.
Meanwhile, Vera was seen emerging from her den for the first time; her single cub, helpless at only four weeks old, appeared to be in good health. A couple of days after the media backlash that followed Vilma's missing cubs, Vera began displaying strange behavior such as carrying her then-unnamed cub around the enclosure and repeatedly dropping it on the hard rock floor. Concerned for the cub's safety, the Nuremberg Zoo made a controversial decision to remove her from her mother's care and raise her by hand.
## Fame
Less than a week after Vera's cub was removed from the polar bear enclosure, the zoo dedicated a website to the cub. It provided frequent updates on her health and development, as well as exclusive photographs and videos. The website also showcased a competition in which fans could vote for the cub's name. The official name was announced on 18 January 2008 by Ulrich Maly, mayor of Nuremberg, and broadcast live on television. Despite the overwhelming number of e-mailed suggestions from across the world (including "Stella", "Knutschi", "Sissi" and "Yuki Chan"), the zoo officially named her Flocke, German for "flake", as in "snowflake". "Flocke", used widely by the media previous to her official naming, was the nickname originally given to her by zookeepers because of her white fur.
Flocke's growth was carefully reported by the media during her first few months. Four zookeepers took turns bottle-feeding the cub with 140 milliliters of artificial milk every four hours and news of her eyes opening for the first time made headlines a few days before she was officially named. At five weeks old, she was referred to by the publication Bild as "Mrs. Knut", suggesting that the two German-born polar bears might become mates when they mature. As she grew, Flocke's diet was enriched with dog food, and boiled bones were supplied for her to chew on when she was three months old. She was soon taken to the zoo's beginners' pool to practice her swimming skills. The zoo had previously stated that they were seeking another orphaned polar or brown bear cub to raise alongside Flocke in order to improve her development.
On 8 April 2008, Flocke made her first public appearance in the polar bear enclosure that had once been home to Vilma; the adult polar bear had been relocated to another zoo. The four-month-old cub was greeted by more than 160 journalists and a half-dozen international camera crews on the first day. During the first week, Flocke was displayed for short intervals with breaks at midday. Expecting a peak of 20,000 visitors, the zoo built a viewing platform, capable of holding 500 people at a time, in front of the enclosure, but attendance by zoo patrons was initially lower than expected. The zoo uses a video transmission and recording system from Bosch Security Systems to transmit TV-quality live images of the cub to a pair of 46-inch (1,200 mm) large-format screens. This system, which includes one screen outside the enclosure, was implemented to help the zoo meet the demands of visitors wanting to catch a glimpse of Flocke.
Shortly after her debut, however, Flocke became the focus of controversy when prominent animal conservationist Jürgen Ortmüller, chairman of the Whale and Dolphin Protection Forum, hired a lawyer to stop Nuremberg Zoo's exploitation of the polar bear cub. Claiming that Flocke's public exposure would have damaging effects and that the zoo was only concerned about earning money, Ortmüller recruited high-profile lawyer Rolf Bossi to challenge them in court.
## Merchandising and branding
Soon after Flocke was rescued in January, the city secured branding rights to her name. An official logo was subsequently released by the zoo. Flocke became part of a major publicity campaign in Nuremberg when she was depicted along with the phrase "Knut war gestern" (Knut is yesterday's bear) on posters for the city's metropolitan region. These posters were displayed at numerous bus and train stops all over the city.
Dubbed "Flocke fever" by the press (similar to the "Knutmania" from the previous year), the cub's popularity soared in early 2008. Her image has been used for games, diaries, soft toys, DVDs, postcards and other items. The first product released, a Flocke-based board game that was released in February, was made by the Fuerth-based firm Noris-Spiele, a unit of Georg Reulein GmbH & Co. KG. The well-known toy company Steiff began selling a variety of Flocke stuffed animals the following May. The income from the merchandise is currently going towards the zoo and to species survival programs.
## Later publicity
In April 2008, the zoo decreased human interaction with the cub, hoping that one day she could coexist with members of her species and not be dependent on humans. Becoming more independent from her keepers, Flocke was reported often playing happily on her own. She was given a plastic "dummy", similar to a child's teething ring, tied to the bars on the inside of her stable door to suckle on while resting. This suckling caused the cub's nose to appear bent; her muzzle remained in this shape for some time before returning to normal.
At the age of six months, it was reported that Flocke, whose diet at the time consisted mostly of a kilogram of beef, assorted vegetables and a liter of puppy milk a day, was at the correct weight for her development at 45 kilograms (99 lb). The zoo's vet, Bernhard Neurohr, also remarked upon the bear's sweet tooth, stating that "Flocke is very enthusiastic about grapes, melon, kiwi fruit and pears", with a particular fondness for bananas.
United Nations Environment Program chief Achim Steiner became Flocke's official patron in May 2008. By assuming this role, Steiner acknowledged Nuremberg Zoo's efforts towards local climate protection, stating "I am happy to have been asked to become 'godfather' to Nuremberg's polar bear cub Flocke. I sincerely hope that during her lifetime we will be able to implement a global green economy."
In June 2008, a new poster campaign featuring Flocke was announced; its goal was strengthening public awareness of individuals' ability to protect Earth's climate. Sponsored by the Nuremberg Zoo in conjunction with the Nuremberg Metropolitan Region, the poster showed Flocke and the phrase "Klimaschutz beginnt vor Ort" ("Climate Protection Begins at Home"). The zoo also published a pocket-sized brochure featuring Flocke. Entitled "Little Guide to Climate Protection", it taught visitors how to decrease their carbon dioxide emissions. The Nuremberg Zoo announced in September that it had reached its one millionth visitor for 2008—two months earlier than last year. Although ticket sales for the year increased due to Flocke's popularity, the numbers did not match high expectations. The same month it was announced that the cub, now weighing 60 kilograms (130 lb), would no longer have lunchtime breaks in her stable, and would remain in the enclosure throughout the day.
## Rasputin and move to France
In late November 2008, Flocke's mother Vera gave birth to two cubs, who were fathered by Flocke's father, Felix. Although Vera was able to care for the new cubs without assistance from zoo keepers, Director Dag Encke initially stated that the cubs had a 50 percent chance of survival. Three weeks after their birth was reported, both cubs died of natural causes within one week of each other. Encke expressed regret after the second cub's death, stating that "Vera nursed regularly and the young animal always slept well afterwards, so it seemed certain that it received enough milk. The reason that the young animal wasted away so quickly is not known."
A male polar bear cub named Rasputin was relocated from Moscow to the Nuremberg Zoo in December 2008 for what was thought to be an extended stay before his permanent move to the Zoo Aquarium de Madrid. Originally meant to remain in Germany for only a year, the male bear—called "Raspi" by fans—shared Flocke's enclosure. The zoo hoped that Rasputin, who unlike Flocke was raised by his mother, would teach their celebrity bear how to interact with those of her own species. According to a statement given by the city, the bears "get along famously".
On 21 October 2009, the city of Nuremberg announced that Flocke and Rasputin would move together to a newly constructed enclosure at Marineland, located in Antibes, France, at the beginning of 2010. Due to the close relationship between the two adolescent bears, officials from the European Conservation Breeding Program (Europäischen Erhaltungszucht-Programms, or "EEP") decided that the two bears should remain together despite earlier plans for Rasputin to relocate to Madrid alone. The enclosure they are vacating in Nuremberg will be utilized by Flocke's parents, Vera and Felix, in the hopes that they will produce more cubs. Despite last minute efforts by the animal right's group PETA to halt the move based on concerns for Flocke and Rasputin's well-being, the two bears arrived safely in France on 22 April 2010.
## See also
- Binky (polar bear)
- Knut (polar bear)
- Wilbär
- List of individual bears
|
791,546 |
Ketogenic diet
| 1,146,995,729 |
High-fat dietary therapy for epilepsy
|
[
"Diets",
"Epilepsy",
"High-fat diets",
"Low-carbohydrate diets"
] |
The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate dietary therapy that in conventional medicine is used mainly to treat hard-to-control (refractory) epilepsy in children. The diet forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates.
Normally carbohydrates in food are converted into glucose, which is then transported around the body and is important in fueling brain function. However, if only a little carbohydrate remains in the diet, the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies, the latter passing into the brain and replacing glucose as an energy source. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the blood (a state called ketosis) eventually lowers the frequency of epileptic seizures. Around half of children and young people with epilepsy who have tried some form of this diet saw the number of seizures drop by at least half, and the effect persists after discontinuing the diet. Some evidence shows that adults with epilepsy may benefit from the diet and that a less strict regimen, such as a modified Atkins diet, is similarly effective. Side effects may include constipation, high cholesterol, growth slowing, acidosis, and kidney stones.
The original therapeutic diet for paediatric epilepsy provides just enough protein for body growth and repair, and sufficient calories to maintain the correct weight for age and height. The classic therapeutic ketogenic diet was developed for treatment of paediatric epilepsy in the 1920s and was widely used into the next decade, but its popularity waned with the introduction of effective anticonvulsant medications. This classic ketogenic diet contains a 4:1 ketogenic ratio or ratio by weight of fat to combined protein and carbohydrate. This is achieved by excluding high-carbohydrate foods such as starchy fruits and vegetables, bread, pasta, grains, and sugar, while increasing the consumption of foods high in fat such as nuts, cream, and butter. Most dietary fat is made of molecules called long-chain triglycerides (LCTs). However, medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs)—made from fatty acids with shorter carbon chains than LCTs—are more ketogenic. A variant of the classic diet known as the MCT ketogenic diet uses a form of coconut oil, which is rich in MCTs, to provide around half the calories. As less overall fat is needed in this variant of the diet, a greater proportion of carbohydrate and protein can be consumed, allowing a greater variety of food choices.
In 1994, Hollywood producer Jim Abrahams, whose son's severe epilepsy was effectively controlled by the diet, created the Charlie Foundation for Ketogenic Therapies to further promote diet therapy. Publicity included an appearance on NBC's Dateline program and ...First Do No Harm (1997), a made-for-television film starring Meryl Streep. The foundation sponsored a research study, the results of which—announced in 1996—marked the beginning of renewed scientific interest in the diet.
Possible therapeutic uses for the ketogenic diet have been studied for many additional neurological disorders, some of which include: Alzheimer's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, headache, neurotrauma, pain, Parkinson's disease, and sleep disorders.
## Epilepsy
Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders after migraine and stroke, affecting around 50 million people worldwide. It is diagnosed in a person having recurrent, unprovoked seizures. These occur when cortical neurons fire excessively, hypersynchronously, or both, leading to temporary disruption of normal brain function. This might affect, for example, the muscles, the senses, consciousness, or a combination. A seizure can be focal (confined to a specific part of the brain) or generalised (spread widely throughout the brain and leading to a loss of consciousness). Epilepsy can occur for a variety of reasons; some forms have been classified into epileptic syndromes, most of which begin in childhood. Epilepsy is considered refractory (not yielding to treatment) when two or three anticonvulsant drugs have failed to control it. About 60% of patients achieve control of their epilepsy with the first drug they use, whereas around 30% do not achieve control with drugs. When drugs fail, other options include epilepsy surgery, vagus nerve stimulation, and the ketogenic diet.
## History
The ketogenic diet is a mainstream medical dietary therapy that was developed to reproduce the success and remove the limitations of the non-mainstream use of fasting to treat epilepsy. Although popular in the 1920s and '30s, it was largely abandoned in favour of new anticonvulsant drugs. Most individuals with epilepsy can successfully control their seizures with medication. However, 25–30% fail to achieve such control despite trying a number of different drugs. For this group, and for children in particular, the diet has once again found a role in epilepsy management.
### Fasting
Physicians of ancient Greece treated diseases, including epilepsy, by altering their patients' diet. An early treatise in the Hippocratic Corpus, On the Sacred Disease, covers the disease; it dates from c. 400 BC. Its author argued against the prevailing view that epilepsy was supernatural in origin and cure, and proposed that dietary therapy had a rational and physical basis. In the same collection, the author of Epidemics describes the case of a man whose epilepsy is cured as quickly as it had appeared, through complete abstinence of food and drink. The royal physician Erasistratus declared, "One inclining to epilepsy should be made to fast without mercy and be put on short rations." Galen believed an "attenuating diet" might afford a cure in mild cases and be helpful in others.
The first modern study of fasting as a treatment for epilepsy was in France in 1911. Twenty epilepsy patients of all ages were "detoxified" by consuming a low-calorie vegetarian diet, combined with periods of fasting and purging. Two benefited enormously, but most failed to maintain compliance with the imposed restrictions. The diet improved the patients' mental capabilities, in contrast to their medication, potassium bromide, which dulled the mind.
Around this time, Bernarr Macfadden, an American exponent of physical culture, popularised the use of fasting to restore health. His disciple, the osteopathic physician Dr. Hugh William Conklin of Battle Creek, Michigan, began to treat his epilepsy patients by recommending fasting. Conklin conjectured that epileptic seizures were caused when a toxin, secreted from the Peyer's patches in the intestines, was discharged into the bloodstream. He recommended a fast lasting 18 to 25 days to allow this toxin to dissipate. Conklin probably treated hundreds of epilepsy patients with his "water diet" and boasted of a 90% cure rate in children, falling to 50% in adults. Later analysis of Conklin's case records showed 20% of his patients achieved freedom from seizures and 50% had some improvement.
Conklin's fasting therapy was adopted by neurologists in mainstream practice. In 1916, a Dr McMurray wrote to the New York Medical Journal claiming to have successfully treated epilepsy patients with a fast, followed by a starch- and sugar-free diet, since 1912. In 1921, prominent endocrinologist Henry Rawle Geyelin reported his experiences to the American Medical Association convention. He had seen Conklin's success first-hand and had attempted to reproduce the results in 36 of his own patients. He achieved similar results despite having studied the patients for only a short time. Further studies in the 1920s indicated that seizures generally returned after the fast. Charles P. Howland, the parent of one of Conklin's successful patients and a wealthy New York corporate lawyer, gave his brother John Elias Howland a gift of \$5,000 to study "the ketosis of starvation". As professor of paediatrics at Johns Hopkins Hospital, John E. Howland used the money to fund research undertaken by neurologist Stanley Cobb and his assistant William G. Lennox.
### Diet
In 1921, Rollin Turner Woodyatt reviewed the research on diet and diabetes. He reported that three water-soluble compounds, β-hydroxybutyrate, acetoacetate, and acetone (known collectively as ketone bodies), were produced by the liver in otherwise healthy people when they were starved or if they consumed a very low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet. Dr. Russell Morse Wilder, at the Mayo Clinic, built on this research and coined the term "ketogenic diet" to describe a diet that produced a high level of ketone bodies in the blood (ketonemia) through an excess of fat and lack of carbohydrate. Wilder hoped to obtain the benefits of fasting in a dietary therapy that could be maintained indefinitely. His trial on a few epilepsy patients in 1921 was the first use of the ketogenic diet as a treatment for epilepsy.
Wilder's colleague, paediatrician Mynie Gustav Peterman, later formulated the classic diet, with a ratio of one gram of protein per kilogram of body weight in children, 10–15 g of carbohydrate per day, and the remainder of calories from fat. Peterman's work in the 1920s established the techniques for induction and maintenance of the diet. Peterman documented positive effects (improved alertness, behaviour, and sleep) and adverse effects (nausea and vomiting due to excess ketosis). The diet proved to be very successful in children: Peterman reported in 1925 that 95% of 37 young patients had improved seizure control on the diet and 60% became seizure-free. By 1930, the diet had also been studied in 100 teenagers and adults. Clifford Joseph Barborka Sr., also from the Mayo Clinic, reported that 56% of those older patients improved on the diet and 12% became seizure-free. Although the adult results are similar to modern studies of children, they did not compare as well to contemporary studies. Barborka concluded that adults were least likely to benefit from the diet, and the use of the ketogenic diet in adults was not studied again until 1999.
### Anticonvulsants and decline
During the 1920s and 1930s, when the only anticonvulsant drugs were the sedative bromides (discovered 1857) and phenobarbital (1912), the ketogenic diet was widely used and studied. This changed in 1938 when H. Houston Merritt Jr. and Tracy Putnam discovered phenytoin (Dilantin), and the focus of research shifted to discovering new drugs. With the introduction of sodium valproate in the 1970s, drugs were available to neurologists that were effective across a broad range of epileptic syndromes and seizure types. The use of the ketogenic diet, by this time, restricted to difficult cases such as Lennox–Gastaut syndrome, declined further.
### MCT diet
In the 1960s, medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) were found to produce more ketone bodies per unit of energy than normal dietary fats (which are mostly long-chain triglycerides). MCTs are more efficiently absorbed and are rapidly transported to the liver via the hepatic portal system rather than the lymphatic system. The severe carbohydrate restrictions of the classic ketogenic diet made it difficult for parents to produce palatable meals that their children would tolerate. In 1971, Peter Huttenlocher devised a ketogenic diet where about 60% of the calories came from the MCT oil, and this allowed more protein and up to three times as much carbohydrate as the classic ketogenic diet. The oil was mixed with at least twice its volume of skimmed milk, chilled, and sipped during the meal or incorporated into food. He tested it on 12 children and adolescents with intractable seizures. Most children improved in both seizure control and alertness, results that were similar to the classic ketogenic diet. Gastrointestinal upset was a problem, which led one patient to abandon the diet, but meals were easier to prepare and better accepted by the children. The MCT diet replaced the classic ketogenic diet in many hospitals, though some devised diets that were a combination of the two.
### Revival
The ketogenic diet achieved national media exposure in the US in October 1994, when NBC's Dateline television programme reported the case of Charlie Abrahams, son of Hollywood producer Jim Abrahams. The two-year-old had epilepsy that had remained uncontrolled by mainstream and alternative therapies. Abrahams discovered a reference to the ketogenic diet in an epilepsy guide for parents and brought Charlie to John M. Freeman at Johns Hopkins Hospital, which had continued to offer the therapy. Under the diet, Charlie's epilepsy was rapidly controlled and his developmental progress resumed. This inspired Abrahams to create the Charlie Foundation to promote the diet and fund research. A multicentre prospective study began in 1994, the results were presented to the American Epilepsy Society in 1996 and were published in 1998. There followed an explosion of scientific interest in the diet. In 1997, Abrahams produced a TV movie, ...First Do No Harm, starring Meryl Streep, in which a young boy's intractable epilepsy is successfully treated by the ketogenic diet.
By 2007, the ketogenic diet was available from around 75 centres in 45 countries, and less restrictive variants, such as the modified Atkins diet, were in use, particularly among older children and adults. The ketogenic diet was also under investigation for the treatment of a wide variety of disorders other than epilepsy.
## Efficacy
The ketogenic diet reduces seizure frequency by more than 50% in half of the patients who try it and by more than 90% in a third of patients. Three-quarters of children who respond do so within two weeks, though experts recommend a trial of at least three months before assuming it has been ineffective. Children with refractory epilepsy are more likely to benefit from the ketogenic diet than from trying another anticonvulsant drug. Adolescents and adults may also benefit from the diet, though compliance with oral diet (vs tube fed) remains a problem.
### Trial design
Early studies reported high success rates; in one study in 1925, 60% of patients became seizure-free, and another 35% of patients had a 50% reduction in seizure frequency. These studies generally examined a cohort of patients recently treated by the physician (a retrospective study) and selected patients who had successfully maintained the dietary restrictions. However, these studies are difficult to compare to modern trials. One reason is that these older trials suffered from selection bias, as they excluded patients who were unable to start or maintain the diet and thereby selected from patients who would generate better results. In an attempt to control for this bias, modern study design prefers a prospective cohort (the patients in the study are chosen before therapy begins) in which the results are presented for all patients regardless of whether they started or completed the treatment (known as intent-to-treat analysis).
Another difference between older and newer studies is that the type of patients treated with the ketogenic diet has changed over time. When first developed and used, the ketogenic diet was not a treatment of last resort; in contrast, the children in modern studies have already tried and failed a number of anticonvulsant drugs, so may be assumed to have more difficult-to-treat epilepsy. Early and modern studies also differ because the treatment protocol has changed. In older protocols, the diet was initiated with a prolonged fast, designed to lose 5–10% body weight, and heavily restricted the calorie intake. Concerns over child health and growth led to a relaxation of the diet's restrictions. Fluid restriction was once a feature of the diet, but this led to increased risk of constipation and kidney stones, and is no longer considered beneficial.
### Outcomes
A study with an intent-to-treat prospective design was published in 1998 by a team from the Johns Hopkins Hospital and followed-up by a report published in 2001. As with most studies of the ketogenic diet, no control group (patients who did not receive the treatment) was used. The study enrolled 150 children. After three months, 83% of them were still on the diet, 26% had experienced a good reduction in seizures, 31% had had an excellent reduction, and 3% were seizure-free. At 12 months, 55% were still on the diet, 23% had a good response, 20% had an excellent response, and 7% were seizure-free. Those who had discontinued the diet by this stage did so because it was ineffective, too restrictive, or due to illness, and most of those who remained were benefiting from it. The percentage of those still on the diet at two, three, and four years was 39%, 20%, and 12%, respectively. During this period, the most common reason for discontinuing the diet was because the children had become seizure-free or significantly better. At four years, 16% of the original 150 children had a good reduction in seizure frequency, 14% had an excellent reduction, and 13% were seizure-free, though these figures include many who were no longer on the diet. Those remaining on the diet after this duration were typically not seizure-free, but had had an excellent response.
It is possible to combine the results of several small studies to produce evidence that is stronger than that available from each study alone—a statistical method known as meta-analysis. One of four such analyses, conducted in 2006, looked at 19 studies on a total of 1,084 patients. It concluded that a third achieved an excellent reduction in seizure frequency and half the patients achieved a good reduction.
A Cochrane systematic review in 2018 found and analysed eleven randomized controlled trials of ketogenic diet in people with epilepsy for whom drugs failed to control their seizures. Six of the trials compared a group assigned to a ketogenic diet with a group not assigned to one. The other trials compared types of diets or ways of introducing them to make them more tolerable. In the largest trial of the ketogenic diet with a non-diet control, nearly 38% of the children and young people had half or fewer seizures with the diet compared 6% with the group not assigned to the diet. Two large trials of the Modified Atkins Diet compared to a non-diet control had similar results, with over 50% of children having half or fewer seizures with the diet compared to around 10% in the control group.
A systematic review in 2018 looked at 16 studies on the ketogenic diet in adults. It concluded that the treatment was becoming more popular for that group of patients, that the efficacy in adults was similar to children, the side effects relatively mild. However, many patients gave up the diet, for various reasons, and the quality of evidence was inferior to studies on children. Health issues include high levels of low-density lipoprotein, high total cholesterol, and weight loss.
## Indications and contraindications
The ketogenic diet is indicated as an adjunctive (additional) treatment in children and young people with drug-resistant epilepsy. It is approved by national clinical guidelines in Scotland, England, and Wales and reimbursed by nearly all US insurance companies. Children with a focal lesion (a single point of brain abnormality causing the epilepsy) who would make suitable candidates for surgery are more likely to become seizure-free with surgery than with the ketogenic diet. About a third of epilepsy centres that offer the ketogenic diet also offer a dietary therapy to adults. The two less restrictive dietary variants—the low glycaemic index treatment and the modified Atkins diet—are more appropriate for adolescents and adults, mainly due to better adherence. A liquid form of the ketogenic diet is particularly easy to prepare for, and well tolerated by infants on formula and by others who are tube-fed.
Advocates for the diet recommend that it be seriously considered after two medications have failed, as the chance of other drugs succeeding is only 10%. The diet is recommended earlier for some epilepsy and genetic syndromes where it has shown particular usefulness. These include Dravet syndrome, infantile spasms, myoclonic-astatic epilepsy, tuberous sclerosis complex and for children fed by gastrostomy tube.
A survey in 2005 of 88 paediatric neurologists in the US found that 36% regularly prescribed the diet after three or more drugs had failed, 24% occasionally prescribed the diet as a last resort, 24% had only prescribed the diet in a few rare cases, and 16% had never prescribed the diet. Several possible explanations exist for this gap between evidence and clinical practice. One major factor may be the lack of adequately trained dietitians who are needed to administer a ketogenic diet programme.
Because the ketogenic diet alters the body's metabolism, it is a first-line therapy in children with certain congenital metabolic diseases such as pyruvate dehydrogenase (E1) deficiency and glucose transporter 1 deficiency syndrome, which prevent the body from using carbohydrates as fuel, leading to a dependency on ketone bodies. The ketogenic diet is beneficial in treating the seizures and some other symptoms in these diseases and is an absolute indication. However, it is absolutely contraindicated in the treatment of other diseases such as pyruvate carboxylase deficiency, porphyria, and other rare genetic disorders of fat metabolism. Persons with a disorder of fatty acid oxidation are unable to metabolise fatty acids, which replace carbohydrates as the major energy source on the diet. On the ketogenic diet, their bodies would consume their own protein stores for fuel, leading to ketoacidosis, and eventually coma and death.
## Interactions
The ketogenic diet is usually initiated in combination with the patient's existing anticonvulsant regimen, though patients may be weaned off anticonvulsants if the diet is successful. Some evidence of synergistic benefits is seen when the diet is combined with the vagus nerve stimulator or with the drug zonisamide, and that the diet may be less successful in children receiving phenobarbital.
## Adverse effects
The ketogenic diet is not considered a benign, holistic, or all-natural treatment. As with any serious medical therapy, it may result in complications, although these are generally less severe and less frequent than with anticonvulsant medication or surgery. Common but easily treatable short-term side effects include constipation, low-grade acidosis, and hypoglycaemia if an initial fast is undertaken. Raised levels of lipids in the blood affect up to 60% of children and cholesterol levels may increase by around 30%. This can be treated by changes to the fat content of the diet, such as from saturated fats towards polyunsaturated fats, and if persistent, by lowering the ketogenic ratio. Supplements are necessary to counter the dietary deficiency of many micronutrients.
Long-term use of the ketogenic diet in children increases the risk of slowed or stunted growth, bone fractures, and kidney stones. The diet reduces levels of insulin-like growth factor 1, which is important for childhood growth. Like many anticonvulsant drugs, the ketogenic diet has an adverse effect on bone health. Many factors may be involved such as acidosis and suppressed growth hormone. About one in 20 children on the ketogenic diet develop kidney stones (compared with one in several thousand for the general population). A class of anticonvulsants known as carbonic anhydrase inhibitors (topiramate, zonisamide) are known to increase the risk of kidney stones, but the combination of these anticonvulsants and the ketogenic diet does not appear to elevate the risk above that of the diet alone. The stones are treatable and do not justify discontinuation of the diet. Around half of clinics gives oral potassium citrate supplements empirically to all ketogenic diet patients, with some evidence that this reduces the incidence of stone formation. However, has not been tested in a prospective controlled trial. Kidney stone formation (nephrolithiasis) is associated with the diet for four reasons:
- Excess calcium in the urine (hypercalciuria) occurs due to increased bone demineralisation with acidosis. Bones are mainly composed of calcium phosphate. The phosphate reacts with the acid, and the calcium is excreted by the kidneys.
- Hypocitraturia: the urine has an abnormally low concentration of citrate, which normally helps to dissolve free calcium.
- The urine has a low pH, which stops uric acid from dissolving, leading to crystals that act as a nidus for calcium stone formation.
- Many institutions traditionally restricted the water intake of patients on the diet to 80% of normal daily needs; this practice is no longer encouraged.
In adolescent and adults, common side effects reported include weight loss, constipation, dyslipidemia, and in women, dysmenorrhea.
## Implementation
The ketogenic diet is a medical nutrition therapy that involves participants from various disciplines. Team members include a registered paediatric dietitian who coordinates the diet programme; a paediatric neurologist who is experienced in offering the ketogenic diet; and a registered nurse who is familiar with childhood epilepsy. Additional help may come from a medical social worker who works with the family and a pharmacist who can advise on the carbohydrate content of medicines. Lastly, the parents and other caregivers must be educated in many aspects of the diet for it to be safely implemented.
Implementing the diet can present difficulties for caregivers and the patient due to the time commitment involved in measuring and planning meals. Since any unplanned eating can potentially break the nutritional balance required, some people find the discipline needed to maintain the diet challenging and unpleasant. Some people terminate the diet or switch to a less demanding diet, like the modified Atkins diet or the low-glycaemic index treatment diet, because they find the difficulties too great.
### Initiation
The Johns Hopkins Hospital protocol for initiating the classic ketogenic diet has been widely adopted. It involves a consultation with the patient and their caregivers and, later, a short hospital admission. Because of the risk of complications during ketogenic diet initiation, most centres begin the diet under close medical supervision in the hospital.
At the initial consultation, patients are screened for conditions that may contraindicate the diet. A dietary history is obtained and the parameters of the diet selected: the ketogenic ratio of fat to combined protein and carbohydrate, the calorie requirements and the fluid intake.
The day before admission to hospital, the proportion of carbohydrate in the diet may be decreased and the patient begins fasting after his or her evening meal. On admission, only calorie- and caffeine-free fluids are allowed until dinner, which consists of "eggnog" restricted to one-third of the typical calories for a meal. The following breakfast and lunch are similar, and on the second day, the "eggnog" dinner is increased to two-thirds of a typical meal's caloric content. By the third day, dinner contains the full calorie quota and is a standard ketogenic meal (not "eggnog"). After a ketogenic breakfast on the fourth day, the patient is discharged. Where possible, the patient's current medicines are changed to carbohydrate-free formulations.
When in the hospital, glucose levels are checked several times daily and the patient is monitored for signs of symptomatic ketosis (which can be treated with a small quantity of orange juice). Lack of energy and lethargy are common, but disappear within two weeks. The parents attend classes over the first three full days, which cover nutrition, managing the diet, preparing meals, avoiding sugar, and handling illness. The level of parental education and commitment required is higher than with medication.
Variations on the Johns Hopkins protocol are common. The initiation can be performed using outpatient clinics rather than requiring a stay in hospital. Often, no initial fast is used (fasting increases the risk of acidosis, hypoglycaemia, and weight loss). Rather than increasing meal sizes over the three-day initiation, some institutions maintain meal size, but alter the ketogenic ratio from 2:1 to 4:1.
For patients who benefit, half achieve a seizure reduction within five days (if the diet starts with an initial fast of one to two days), three-quarters achieve a reduction within two weeks, and 90% achieve a reduction within 23 days. If the diet does not begin with a fast, the time for half of the patients to achieve an improvement is longer (two weeks), but the long-term seizure reduction rates are unaffected. Parents are encouraged to persist with the diet for at least three months before any final consideration is made regarding efficacy.
### Maintenance
After initiation, the child regularly visits the hospital outpatient clinic where they are seen by the dietitian and neurologist, and various tests and examinations are performed. These are held every three months for the first year and then every six months thereafter. Infants under one year old are seen more frequently, with the initial visit held after just two to four weeks. A period of minor adjustments is necessary to ensure consistent ketosis is maintained and to better adapt the meal plans to the patient. This fine-tuning is typically done over the telephone with the hospital dietitian and includes changing the number of calories, altering the ketogenic ratio, or adding some MCT or coconut oils to a classic diet. Urinary ketone levels are checked daily to detect whether ketosis has been achieved and to confirm that the patient is following the diet, though the level of ketones does not correlate with an anticonvulsant effect. This is performed using ketone test strips containing nitroprusside, which change colour from buff-pink to maroon in the presence of acetoacetate (one of the three ketone bodies).
A short-lived increase in seizure frequency may occur during illness or if ketone levels fluctuate. The diet may be modified if seizure frequency remains high, or the child is losing weight. Loss of seizure-control may come from unexpected sources. Even "sugar-free" food can contain carbohydrates such as maltodextrin, sorbitol, starch, and fructose. The sorbitol content of suntan lotion and other skincare products may be high enough for some to be absorbed through the skin and thus negate ketosis.
### Discontinuation
About 20% of children on the ketogenic diet achieve freedom from seizures, and many are able to reduce the use of anticonvulsant drugs or eliminate them altogether. Commonly, at around two years on the diet, or after six months of being seizure-free, the diet may be gradually discontinued over two or three months. This is done by lowering the ketogenic ratio until urinary ketosis is no longer detected, and then lifting all calorie restrictions. This timing and method of discontinuation mimics that of anticonvulsant drug therapy in children, where the child has become seizure-free. When the diet is required to treat certain metabolic diseases, the duration will be longer. The total diet duration is up to the treating ketogenic diet team and parents; durations up to 12 years have been studied and found beneficial.
Children who discontinue the diet after achieving seizure freedom have about a 20% risk of seizures returning. The length of time until recurrence is highly variable, but averages two years. This risk of recurrence compares with 10% for resective surgery (where part of the brain is removed) and 30–50% for anticonvulsant therapy. Of those who have a recurrence, just over half can regain freedom from seizures either with anticonvulsants or by returning to the ketogenic diet. Recurrence is more likely if, despite seizure freedom, an electroencephalogram shows epileptiform spikes, which indicate epileptic activity in the brain but are below the level that will cause a seizure. Recurrence is also likely if an MRI scan shows focal abnormalities (for example, as in children with tuberous sclerosis). Such children may remain on the diet longer than average, and children with tuberous sclerosis who achieve seizure freedom could remain on the ketogenic diet indefinitely.
## Variants
### Classic
The ketogenic diet is calculated by a dietitian for each child. Age, weight, activity levels, culture, and food preferences all affect the meal plan. First, the energy requirements are set at 80–90% of the recommended daily amounts (RDA) for the child's age (the high-fat diet requires less energy to process than a typical high-carbohydrate diet). Highly active children or those with muscle spasticity require more food energy than this; immobile children require less. The ketogenic ratio of the diet compares the weight of fat to the combined weight of carbohydrate and protein. This is typically 4:1, but children who are younger than 18 months, older than 12 years, or who are obese may be started on a 3:1 ratio. Fat is energy-rich, with 9 kcal/g (38 kJ/g) compared to 4 kcal/g (17 kJ/g) for carbohydrate or protein, so portions on the ketogenic diet are smaller than normal. The quantity of fat in the diet can be calculated from the overall energy requirements and the chosen ketogenic ratio. Next, the protein levels are set to allow for growth and body maintenance, and are around 1 g protein for each kg of body weight. Lastly, the amount of carbohydrate is set according to what allowance is left while maintaining the chosen ratio. Any carbohydrate in medications or supplements must be subtracted from this allowance. The total daily amount of fat, protein, and carbohydrate is then evenly divided across the meals.
A computer program such as KetoCalculator may be used to help generate recipes. The meals often have four components: heavy whipping cream, a protein-rich food (typically meat), a fruit or vegetable and a fat such as butter, vegetable oil, or mayonnaise. Only low-carbohydrate fruits and vegetables are allowed, which excludes bananas, potatoes, peas, and corn. Suitable fruits are divided into two groups based on the amount of carbohydrate they contain, and vegetables are similarly divided into two groups. Foods within each of these four groups may be freely substituted to allow for variation without needing to recalculate portion sizes. For example, cooked broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and green beans are all equivalent. Fresh, canned, or frozen foods are equivalent, but raw and cooked vegetables differ, and processed foods are an additional complication. Parents are required to be precise when measuring food quantities on an electronic scale accurate to 1 g. The child must eat the whole meal and cannot have extra portions; any snacks must be incorporated into the meal plan. A small amount of MCT oil may be used to help with constipation or to increase ketosis.
The classic ketogenic diet is not a balanced diet and only contains tiny portions of fresh fruit and vegetables, fortified cereals, and calcium-rich foods. In particular, the B vitamins, calcium, and vitamin D must be artificially supplemented. This is achieved by taking two sugar-free supplements designed for the patient's age: a multivitamin with minerals and calcium with vitamin D. A typical day of food for a child on a 4:1 ratio, 1,500 kcal (6,300 kJ) ketogenic diet comprises three small meals and three small snacks:
### MCT oil
Normal dietary fat contains mostly long-chain triglycerides (LCTs). Medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) are more ketogenic than LCTs because they generate more ketones per unit of energy when metabolised. Their use allows for a diet with a lower proportion of fat and a greater proportion of protein and carbohydrate, leading to more food choices and larger portion sizes. The original MCT diet developed by Peter Huttenlocher in the 1970s derived 60% of its calories from MCT oil. Consuming that quantity of MCT oil caused abdominal cramps, diarrhoea, and vomiting in some children. A figure of 45% is regarded as a balance between achieving good ketosis and minimising gastrointestinal complaints. The classical and modified MCT ketogenic diets are equally effective and differences in tolerability are not statistically significant. The MCT diet is less popular in the United States; MCT oil is more expensive than other dietary fats and is not covered by insurance companies.
### Modified Atkins
First reported in 2003, the idea of using a form of the Atkins diet to treat epilepsy came about after parents and patients discovered that the induction phase of the Atkins diet controlled seizures. The ketogenic diet team at Johns Hopkins Hospital modified the Atkins diet by removing the aim of achieving weight loss, extending the induction phase indefinitely, and specifically encouraging fat consumption. Compared with the ketogenic diet, the modified Atkins diet (MAD) places no limit on calories or protein, and the lower overall ketogenic ratio (about 1:1) does not need to be consistently maintained by all meals of the day. The MAD does not begin with a fast or with a stay in hospital and requires less dietitian support than the ketogenic diet. Carbohydrates are initially limited to 10 g per day in children or 20 g per day in adults, and are increased to 20–30 g per day after a month or so, depending on the effect on seizure control or tolerance of the restrictions. Like the ketogenic diet, the MAD requires vitamin and mineral supplements and children are carefully and periodically monitored at outpatient clinics.
The modified Atkins diet reduces seizure frequency by more than 50% in 43% of patients who try it and by more than 90% in 27% of patients. Few adverse effects have been reported, though cholesterol is increased and the diet has not been studied long term. Although based on a smaller data set (126 adults and children from 11 studies over five centres), these results from 2009 compare favorably with the traditional ketogenic diet.
### Low glycemic index treatment
The low glycemic index treatment (LGIT) is an attempt to achieve the stable blood glucose levels seen in children on the classic ketogenic diet while using a much less restrictive regimen. The hypothesis is that stable blood glucose may be one of the mechanisms of action involved in the ketogenic diet, which occurs because the absorption of the limited carbohydrates is slowed by the high fat content. Although it is also a high-fat diet (with approximately 60% calories from fat), the LGIT allows more carbohydrate than either the classic ketogenic diet or the modified Atkins diet, approximately 40–60 g per day. However, the types of carbohydrates consumed are restricted to those that have a glycaemic index lower than 50. Like the modified Atkins diet, the LGIT is initiated and maintained at outpatient clinics and does not require precise weighing of food or intensive dietitian support. Both are offered at most centres that run ketogenic diet programmes, and in some centres they are often the primary dietary therapy for adolescents.
Short-term results for the LGIT indicate that at one month approximately half of the patients experience a greater than 50% reduction in seizure frequency, with overall figures approaching that of the ketogenic diet. The data (coming from one centre's experience with 76 children up to the year 2009) also indicate fewer side effects than the ketogenic diet and that it is better tolerated, with more palatable meals.
### Prescribed formulations
Infants and patients fed via a gastrostomy tube can also be given a ketogenic diet. Parents make up a prescribed powdered formula, such as KetoCal, into a liquid feed. Gastrostomy feeding avoids any issues with palatability, and bottle-fed infants readily accept the ketogenic formula. Some studies have found this liquid feed to be more efficacious and associated with lower total cholesterol than a solid ketogenic diet. KetoCal is a nutritionally complete food containing milk protein and is supplemented with amino acids, fat, carbohydrate, vitamins, minerals and trace elements. It is used to administer the 4:1 ratio classic ketogenic diet in children over one year. The formula is available in both 3:1 and 4:1 ratios, either unflavoured or in an artificially sweetened vanilla flavour and is suitable for tube or oral feeding. Other formula products include KetoVolve and Ketonia. Alternatively, a liquid ketogenic diet may be produced by combining Ross Carbohydrate Free soy formula with Microlipid and Polycose.
### Worldwide
In theory, there are no restrictions on where the ketogenic diet might be used, and it can cost less than modern anticonvulsants. However, fasting and dietary changes are affected by religious and cultural issues. A culture where food is often prepared by grandparents or hired help means more people must be educated about the diet. When families dine together, sharing the same meal, it can be difficult to separate the child's meal. In many countries, food labelling is not mandatory, so calculating macronutrients such as fat, protein and carbohydrates can be difficult. In some countries, it may be hard to find sugar-free forms of medicines and supplements, to purchase an accurate electronic scale, or to afford MCT oils.
In Asia, the traditional diet includes rice and noodles as the main source of energy, making their elimination difficult. Therefore, the MCT-oil form of the diet, which allows more carbohydrate, has proved useful. In India, religious beliefs commonly affect the diet: for instance, Hindus consider cows sacred animals not to be killed and eaten, Islam forbids consumption of pork, and strict vegetarians of the Jain faith do not eat root vegetables. The Indian ketogenic diet is started without a fast due to cultural opposition towards fasting in children. The low-fat, high-carbohydrate nature of the normal Indian and Asian diet means that their ketogenic diets typically have a lower ketogenic ratio (1:1) than in America and Europe. However, they appear to be just as effective.
In many developing countries, the ketogenic diet is expensive because dairy fats and meat are more expensive than grain, fruit, and vegetables. The modified Atkins diet has been proposed as a lower-cost alternative for those countries; the slightly more expensive food bill can be offset by a reduction in pharmaceutical costs if the diet is successful. The modified Atkins diet is less complex to explain and prepare and requires less support from a dietitian.
## Mechanism of action
### Seizure pathology
The brain is composed of a network of neurons that transmit signals by propagating nerve impulses. The propagation of this impulse from one neuron to another is typically controlled by neurotransmitters, though there are also electrical pathways between some neurons. Neurotransmitters can inhibit impulse firing (primarily done by γ-aminobutyric acid, or GABA) or they can excite the neuron into firing (primarily done by glutamate). A neuron that releases inhibitory neurotransmitters from its terminals is called an inhibitory neuron, while one that releases excitatory neurotransmitters is an excitatory neuron. When the normal balance between inhibition and excitation is significantly disrupted in all or part of the brain, a seizure can occur. The GABA system is an important target for anticonvulsant drugs, since seizures may be discouraged by increasing GABA synthesis, decreasing its breakdown, or enhancing its effect on neurons.
The nerve impulse is characterised by a great influx of sodium ions through channels in the neuron's cell membrane followed by an efflux of potassium ions through other channels. The neuron is unable to fire again for a short time (known as the refractory period), which is mediated by another potassium channel. The flow through these ion channels is governed by a "gate" which is opened by either a voltage change or a chemical messenger known as a ligand (such as a neurotransmitter). These channels are another target for anticonvulsant drugs.
There are many ways in which epilepsy occurs. Examples of pathological physiology include: unusual excitatory connections within the neuronal network of the brain; abnormal neuron structure leading to altered current flow; decreased inhibitory neurotransmitter synthesis; ineffective receptors for inhibitory neurotransmitters; insufficient breakdown of excitatory neurotransmitters leading to excess; immature synapse development; and impaired function of ionic channels.
### Seizure control
Although many hypotheses have been put forward to explain how the ketogenic diet works, it remains a mystery. Disproven hypotheses include systemic acidosis (high levels of acid in the blood), electrolyte changes and hypoglycaemia (low blood glucose). Although many biochemical changes are known to occur in the brain of a patient on the ketogenic diet, it is not known which of these has an anticonvulsant effect. The lack of understanding in this area is similar to the situation with many anticonvulsant drugs.
On the ketogenic diet, carbohydrates are restricted and so cannot provide for all the metabolic needs of the body. Instead, fatty acids are used as the major source of fuel. These are used through fatty-acid oxidation in the cell's mitochondria (the energy-producing parts of the cell). Humans can convert some amino acids into glucose by a process called gluconeogenesis, but cannot do this by using fatty acids. Since amino acids are needed to make proteins, which are essential for growth and repair of body tissues, these cannot be used only to produce glucose. This could pose a problem for the brain, since it is normally fuelled solely by glucose, and most fatty acids do not cross the blood–brain barrier. However, the liver can use long-chain fatty acids to synthesise the three ketone bodies β-hydroxybutyrate, acetoacetate and acetone. These ketone bodies enter the brain and partially substitute for blood glucose as a source of energy.
The ketone bodies are possibly anticonvulsant; in animal models, acetoacetate and acetone protect against seizures. The ketogenic diet results in adaptive changes to brain energy metabolism that increase the energy reserves; ketone bodies are a more efficient fuel than glucose, and the number of mitochondria is increased. This may help the neurons to remain stable in the face of increased energy demand during a seizure, and may confer a neuroprotective effect.
The ketogenic diet has been studied in at least 14 rodent animal models of seizures. It is protective in many of these models and has a different protection profile than any known anticonvulsant. Conversely, fenofibrate, not used clinically as an antiepileptic, exhibits experimental anticonvulsant properties in adult rats comparable to the ketogenic diet. This, together with studies showing its efficacy in patients who have failed to achieve seizure control on half a dozen drugs, suggests a unique mechanism of action.
Anticonvulsants suppress epileptic seizures, but they neither cure nor prevent the development of seizure susceptibility. The development of epilepsy (epileptogenesis) is a process that is poorly understood. A few anticonvulsants (valproate, levetiracetam and benzodiazepines) have shown antiepileptogenic properties in animal models of epileptogenesis. However, no anticonvulsant has ever achieved this in a clinical trial in humans. The ketogenic diet has been found to have antiepileptogenic properties in rats.
## Other medical applications
The ketogenic diet has been studied for potential therapeutic use in various neurological disorders other than epilepsy: Alzheimer's disease (AD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), autism, headache, neurotrauma, pain, Parkinson's disease (PD) and sleep disorders. As of 2022 there is no clinical evidence that a ketogenic diet is effective to treat cancer.
## See also
- Fad diet
- List of diets
## Explanatory notes
|
9,213,332 |
Adventure Time
| 1,173,669,401 |
American animated television series
|
[
"2010 American television series debuts",
"2010s American LGBT-related animated television series",
"2010s American LGBT-related comedy television series",
"2010s American animated comedy television series",
"2010s American animated television series",
"2010s American surreal comedy television series",
"2018 American television series endings",
"Adventure Time",
"American children's animated action television series",
"American children's animated adventure television series",
"American children's animated comic science fiction television series",
"American children's animated science fantasy television series",
"Animated television series about brothers",
"Animated television series about dogs",
"Animated television series about orphans",
"Annie Award-winning television shows",
"BAFTA winners (television series)",
"Boom! Studios titles",
"Cartoon Network Studios superheroes",
"Cartoon Network original programming",
"Emmy Award-winning programs",
"English-language television shows",
"Existentialist television series",
"Frederator Studios",
"LGBT speculative fiction television series",
"Post-apocalyptic animated television series",
"Post-apocalyptic television series",
"Teen animated television series",
"Television series about shapeshifting",
"Television series about size change",
"Television series by Cartoon Network Studios",
"Television series by Rough Draft Studios",
"Television series created by Pendleton Ward",
"Television shows adapted into comics",
"Television shows adapted into video games",
"Wizards in television",
"Works based on Dungeons & Dragons"
] |
Adventure Time is an American fantasy animated television series created by Pendleton Ward for Cartoon Network. The series follows the adventures of a boy named Finn (Jeremy Shada) and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake (John DiMaggio)—a dog with the magical power to change size and shape at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, where they interact with Princess Bubblegum (Hynden Walch), the Ice King (Tom Kenny), Marceline (Olivia Olson), BMO (Niki Yang), and others. The series is based on a 2007 short film that aired on Nicktoons. After the short became a viral hit on the Internet, Nickelodeon's executives passed on its option before Cartoon Network commissioned a full-length series from Fred Seibert and Ward, which was previewed on March 11, 2010. The same year, the series premiered on Cartoon Network on April 5, and it ended its eight-year run on September 3, 2018.
The series drew inspiration from a variety of sources, including the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons and video games. It was produced using hand-drawn animation; action and dialogue for episodes are decided by storyboarding artists based on rough outlines. Because each episode took roughly eight to nine months to complete, multiple episodes were worked on concurrently. The cast members recorded their lines in group recordings, and the series regularly employed guest actors for minor and recurring characters. Each episode runs for about eleven minutes; pairs of episodes are often telecast to fill half-hour program slots. Cartoon Network announced on September 29, 2016, that the series would conclude in 2018, after the airing of its tenth season. The series finale aired on September 3, 2018, which was followed by the Adventure Time: Distant Lands specials and the Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake spin-off, which were released on Max.
Adventure Time was a ratings success for Cartoon Network, with some of its episodes attracting over three million viewers, and despite being aimed primarily at children, the show has developed a following among teenagers and adults. Adventure Time has received universal acclaim from critics, with much praise geared towards its originality and worldbuilding. The show won eight Primetime Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, three Annie Awards, two British Academy Children's Awards, a Motion Picture Sound Editors Award, and a Kerrang! Award. The series has also been nominated for three Critics' Choice Television Awards, two Annecy Festival Awards, a TCA Award, and a Sundance Film Festival Award, among others. Of the many comic book spin-offs based on the series, one received an Eisner Award and two Harvey Awards. The series has also spawned various forms of licensed merchandise, including books, video games and clothing.
## Premise
Adventure Time follows the adventures of a boy named Finn the Human (voiced by Jeremy Shada), and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake the Dog (John DiMaggio), who has magical powers to change shape and size at will. Pendleton Ward, the series' creator, describes Finn as a "fiery little kid with strong morals". Jake, on the other hand, is based on Tripper Harrison, Bill Murray's character in Meatballs. This means while Jake is somewhat care-free, he will "sit [Finn] down and give him some decent advice if he really needs it". Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, which was ravaged by a cataclysmic event known as the "Mushroom War", a nuclear war that destroyed civilization a thousand years before the series' events. Throughout the series, Finn and Jake interact with major characters, including Princess Bubblegum (Hynden Walch), the sovereign of the Candy Kingdom and a sentient piece of gum; the Ice King (Tom Kenny), a menacing but largely misunderstood ice wizard; Marceline the Vampire Queen (Olivia Olson), a thousand-year-old vampire and rock music enthusiast; Lumpy Space Princess (Pendleton Ward), a melodramatic and immature princess made out of "lumps"; BMO (Niki Yang), a sentient video game console-shaped robot that lives with Finn and Jake; and Flame Princess (Jessica DiCicco), a flame elemental and ruler of the Fire Kingdom.
## Development
### Concept and creation
According to series creator Pendleton Ward, the show's style was influenced by his time attending the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and his experiences working as a writer and storyboard artist on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, a series which ran on Cartoon Network from 2008 until 2010. In an interview with Animation World Network, Ward said he strives to combine Adventure Time's subversive humor with "beautiful" moments, using Hayao Miyazaki's film My Neighbor Totoro as inspiration for the latter. Ward has also named Home Movies and Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist as influences, largely because both shows are "relaxing" and feature "conversational dialogue that feels natural [and is neither] over the top [nor] cartoony and shrill".
The series can trace its origin back to a seven-minute, stand-alone animated short film of the same name (this short would later be identified as the show's pilot post facto). Produced by Frederator Studios, the short was created by Ward almost entirely by himself, and its production concluded in early 2006. It was first broadcast on Nicktoons Network on January 11, 2007, and was re-broadcast as part of Frederator's anthology show Random! Cartoons on December 7, 2008. After its initial release, the video became a viral hit on the Internet. Frederator then pitched an Adventure Time series to Nicktoons Network, which rejected it five times. When Nicktoons' rights to commission a full series expired, Frederator pitched it to other channels. One of the studios that Frederator approached was Cartoon Network, which was interested in producing a full series, but would commit to a deal only if Ward could prove the pilot "wasn't a one-hit wonder". Rob Sorcher, the chief content officer at Cartoon Network, was influential in getting the network to take a chance on the show; he recognized the series as "something that felt really indie ... comic book-y [and] new".
Cartoon Network asked Ward to submit a sample script for their consideration, but Frederator convinced him to rough out a storyboard instead, as "a board would give a better sense of what was on Pen's mind", according to Frederator's vice president Eric Homan. Ward and his college friends Patrick McHale and Adam Muto (the former of whom served as a writer, storyboard artist, and creative director for the show during its first few seasons, while the latter served as a storyboard artist and creative director for the show before becoming its showrunner) began developing ideas, all the while concentrating on "keep[ing] the good things about the original short [while also] improv[ing] on" them. The group's first product was a rough storyboard featuring Finn and Princess Bubblegum going on a spaghetti-supper date. Cartoon Network was not happy with this story, and so Ward, McHale, and Muto created a storyboard for the episode "The Enchiridion!", which was their attempt to consciously emulate the style of the original Nicktoons short. This tactic proved successful, and in September 2008, Cartoon Network approved a first season, which would be produced by Cartoon Network Studios. "The Enchiridion!" was the first episode to enter into production.
Ward and his production team began storyboarding episodes and writing plot outlines, but Cartoon Network was still concerned about the direction of the new series. McHale later recalled that during the pitch of an episode titled "Brothers in Insomnia" (which, for various reasons, was scrapped) the room was filled with executives from Cartoon Network. The pitch went well, but the production staff was soon inundated with questions about the stylistic nature of the series. Around this time, Cartoon Network paused the production of the show in an attempt to resolve these creative issues. A number of writers and animators were let go, and in their place, Cartoon Network management hired three veteran animators who had worked on SpongeBob SquarePants: Derek Drymon (who served as executive producer for the first season of Adventure Time), Merriwether Williams (who served as head story editor for the show's first and second seasons), and Nick Jennings (who became the series' long-serving art director). Drymon, in particular, played a key role at this time, ensuring that both Cartoon Network and the show's production crew were on the same creative page. Thurop Van Orman, the creator of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, was also hired to guide Ward and his staff for the first two seasons. The storyboard for "Prisoners of Love" assuaged many of the fears some Cartoon Network executives had expressed.
As production for season one progressed, more artists were brought on board. Dan "Ghostshrimp" Bandit, a freelance illustrator who had also written and storyboarded on Flapjack, was hired as the show's lead background designer; Ward told him to create background art that set the show "in a 'Ghostshrimp World'". Ghostshrimp designed major locations, including Finn and Jake's home, the Candy Kingdom, and the Ice Kingdom. The position of lead character designer was given to Phil Rynda, who held this role for two-and-a-half seasons. The lead production crew for the show (which included Ward and McHale) were initially hesitant to bring him on board, but they were soon convinced by director Larry Leichliter, who assured them Rynda was talented and could draw in a variety of styles. With the producers satisfied, Rynda quickly began designing characters that were simple but still fell in line with "Pen's natural aesthetic". Around this time, Rynda and McHale began drafting artistic guidelines for the show, so that its animation style would always be somewhat consistent. With many of the lead production roles filled, Ward turned his attention to choosing storyboard artists for the first season. He assembled a team made up largely of "younger, inexperienced people", many of whom he discovered on the Internet. Many of these individuals had backgrounds in indie comics, and Ward has called them "really smart, smartypants people" who were responsible for inserting more idiosyncratic and spiritual ideas into the series.
For the first four-and-a-half seasons of the show, Ward served as the showrunner for Adventure Time. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Ward revealed that he had stepped down from this role sometime during the fifth season. As a naturally introverted person, he found interacting with and directing people every day to be exhausting. Following Ward's resignation from the post, Adam Muto became the series' new showrunner. Until late 2014, Ward continued to work on the cartoon as a storyboard artist and storyline writer. After November 2014, he stopped regularly contributing to episode outlines, but still looked over stories, provided occasional input, and continued to storyboard for the series on a limited basis.
### Production
#### Writing and storyboarding
In terms of tone and genre, Ward—a self-professed fan of ambivalent emotions, such as feeling "happy and scared at the same time"—has described the show as a "dark comedy". He has also cited the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons—of which many of the show's writers are devotees—as an inspiration for the show. In the United States, the series is rated TV-PG; Ward said he never wanted to push the boundaries of the PG rating, noting in an interview with Art of the Title that he "never really even thought about the rating ... we don't like stuff that's overly gross. We like cute stuff and nice things". Ward intended the show's world to have a coherent physical logic, and although magic exists in the story, the show's writers tried to create an internal consistency in the characters' interactions with the world.
In an interview with The A.V. Club, Ward said the show's writing process usually began with the writers telling each other what they had done the previous week to find something humorous to build on. He also said, "A lot of the time, if we're really stuck, we'll start saying everything that comes to our mind, which is usually the worst stuff, and then someone else will think that's terrible but it'll give him a better idea and the ball just starts rolling like that". Because of the busy schedule of writing and coordinating a television series, the writers did not have time to play Dungeons and Dragons, but they still wrote stories they would "want to be playing D&D with". Sometimes, the writers and storyboard artists convened and played writing games. One game that was often used is called exquisite corpse; one writer starts a story on a sheet of paper, and another writer tries to finish it. But while a few episodes (such as the fifth-season episode "Puhoy" and the sixth-season episode "Jake the Brick") have been generated using this game, Ward has confessed that "the ideas are usually terrible". Former storyboard artist and creative director Cole Sanchez said episode scripts are either created by expanding the good ideas produced by these writing games, or are based on an idea proposed by a storyboard artist in the hope it can be developed into an episode.
After the writers pitched stories, the ideas were compiled onto a two-or-three-page outline that contained "the important beats". The episodes were then passed to storyboard artists (often referred to colloquially as "boarders"). While many cartoons are based on script pitches to network executives, Cartoon Network allowed Adventure Time to "build their own teams organically" and communicate using storyboards and animatics. Rob Sorcher said this novel approach was sanctioned because the company was dealing with "primarily visual people", and that by using storyboards the writers and artists could learn and grow "by actually doing the work". The storyboard artists generally worked on an episode in pairs, independent from other storyboarders, which, according to freelance writer David Perlmutter in his book America Toons In, countered creative ennui and prevented episodes from being "alike in either content or tone". The storyboard artists were given a week to "thumbnail" (roughly sketch out) a storyboard and fill in the details complete with action, dialogue, and jokes. The series' showrunner and his creative directors then reviewed the storyboard and made notes. The artists were then given another week to implement the notes and to clean up the episode. Storyboard writing and revising usually took up to a month.
#### Animation
Following the writing revisions, voice actors would record their parts for the episodes and an animatic would be compiled to reduce the running time to the necessary eleven minutes. Specialized artists then created prop, character, and background designs. According to former lead character designer Phil Rynda, most of this pre-production was done in Photoshop. While the episodes' design and coloring was done at Cartoon Network Studios in Burbank, California, the actual animation was handled in South Korea by either Rough Draft Korea or Saerom Animation. Animating an episode often took between three and five months alone. The animation was hand-drawn on paper, which was then digitally composited and painted with digital ink and paint. Executive producer Fred Seibert compared the show's animation style to that of Felix the Cat and various Max Fleischer cartoons, but said its world was equally inspired by "the world of videogames [sic]".
While the episodes were being handled in South Korea, the production crew in the United States worked on retakes, music scoring, and sound design. Upon being completed, the animation was sent back to the United States, at which point it was inspected by the production crew, who looked for mistakes in the animation or "things that didn't animate the way [the staff] intended". These problems were then fixed in Korea and the animation was finalized. From story outlining to broadcast, it took between eight and nine months for each episode to be created; because of this, multiple episodes were worked on concurrently.
While a great majority of the series' episodes were animated by Korean animation studios, Adventure Time occasionally featured guest animators and directors. For instance, the second-season episode "Guardians of Sunshine" was partly rendered in 3-D to emulate the style of a video game. The fifth-season episode "A Glitch is a Glitch" was written and directed by Irish filmmaker and writer David OReilly, and features his distinctive 3-D animation. Animator James Baxter animated select scenes and characters in both the fifth-season episode "James Baxter the Horse" as well as the eighth-season episode "Horse & Ball". The sixth-season episode "Food Chain" was written, storyboarded, and directed by Japanese anime director Masaaki Yuasa, and was animated entirely by Yuasa's own studio Science SARU. Another sixth-season episode, "Water Park Prank", features Flash animation by David Ferguson. A stop-motion episode titled "Bad Jubies", directed by Kirsten Lepore, aired near the middle of the show's seventh season. Finally, Alex and Lindsay Small-Butera, noted for their web series Baman Piderman, contributed animation to the eighth-season episode "Beyond the Grotto" and the ninth-season episode "Ketchup".
#### Cast
The series' voice actors include: Jeremy Shada (Finn the Human), John DiMaggio (Jake the Dog), Tom Kenny (The Ice King), Hynden Walch (Princess Bubblegum), and Olivia Olson (Marceline the Vampire Queen). Ward provides voices for several minor characters and Lumpy Space Princess. Former storyboard artist Niki Yang voices the sentient video game console BMO in English, as well as Jake's girlfriend Lady Rainicorn in Korean. Polly Lou Livingston, a friend of Pendleton Ward's mother Bettie Ward, plays the voice of the small elephant named Tree Trunks.
The Adventure Time cast members recorded their lines together at group recording sessions rather than individually, with the aim of recording natural-sounding dialogue. Hynden Walch has described these group recordings as being akin to "doing a play reading—a really, really out there play". The series regularly employed guest actors for minor and recurring characters, and crew members cast people with whom they were interested in working. For instance, in a panel, both Adam Muto and Kent Osborne said the Adventure Time crew often sought out actors who had had roles in the television programs Star Trek: The Next Generation and The Office to play various supporting or background characters.
#### Title sequence and music
When Ward was developing the series' title sequences, the rough draft version consisted of quick shots and vignettes that were "just sort of crazy [and] nonsensical", which alluded to the show's theme of quirky adventures. These drafts included "the characters ... just punching random ghosts and monsters, jumping through anything and everything [and] there were a bunch of atomic bombs at the end of it". Ward later called this version "really silly". He sent the draft to Cartoon Network; they did not like it and wanted something more graphical like the introduction to The Brady Bunch. Inspired by the title sequences of The Simpsons and Pee-wee's Playhouse, Ward developed a new title sequence featuring a panning sweep of the Land of Ooo while a synthesizer note rose slowly until the main theme was played. Ward's draft for this idea was handed to layout animators, who then finalized the timing for the sequence. From there, the sequence evolved; while Ward added "silly character stuff", Patrick McHale focused his attention on the Ice King's shot and gave him a "high school [year]book" smile. The crew also struggled to get the shadows in the shot featuring Marceline correct. After the panning sweep, the sequence cuts to the theme song, which plays while shots of Finn and Jake adventuring are shown. For this part of the sequence, Ward was inspired by the "simple" aspects of the introduction to the 2007 comedy film Superbad. When the theme mentions "Jake the Dog" and "Finn the Human", the characters' names are displayed next to their heads, with a solid color in the background. The sequence was finalized immediately before the series aired.
The show's eponymous theme song is sung by Ward, accompanied by a ukulele. It is first heard in the pilot episode; in that version, Ward is accompanied by an acoustic guitar. For the version used in the series, Ward sang in a higher register to match with the higher range of the ukulele. The finalized version of the theme song was originally supposed to be a temporary version. Ward said, "I recorded the lyrics for the opening title in the animatics room where we have this little crummy microphone just so that we could add it to the titles and submit it to the network. Later, we tried re-recording it and I didn't like it ... I only liked the temp one!" Because the series' finalized theme song was originally recorded as a temp track, ambient noises can be heard throughout. For instance, the sound of Derek Drymon typing can be heard while Jake is walking through the Ice Kingdom. According to Ward, much of the series' music has similar "hiss and grit" because one of the show's original composers, Casey James Basichis, "lives in a pirate ship he's built inside of an apartment [and] you can hear floorboards squeak and lots of other weird sounds". As the show progressed, Basichis's friend Tim Kiefer joined the show as an additional composer. The two now work together on its music.
The show's title sequence and theme song have stayed mostly consistent throughout its run, with seven exceptions. During the Fionna and Cake episodes (viz. season three's "Fionna and Cake", season five's "Bad Little Boy", season six's "The Prince Who Wanted Everything", season eight's "Five Short Tables", and season nine's "Fionna and Cake and Fionna") the series runs a different intro sequence that mirrors the original, with the major exception that all the characters are gender-bent, and the theme is sung by former storyboard revisionist Natasha Allegri. Likewise, the intro to the series' three miniseries are each unique: the introduction to the Marceline-centric Stakes (2015) places most of the emphasis on Marceline, and the theme song is sung by Olivia Olson; the introduction to Islands (2017) adopts a nautical theme, highlights the principal characters in the miniseries, and is sung by Jeremy Shada; and the intro to Elements (2017) features imagery reflecting the four primary elements in the Adventure Time universe (that is: fire, ice, slime, and candy) and is sung by Hynden Walch. The introductions to the guest-animated episodes "A Glitch Is a Glitch" and "Food Chain" are each unique, featuring animation courtesy of David OReilly and Masaaki Yuasa, respectively. Finally, the series finale, "Come Along With Me", features an introduction offering viewers a glimpse of future Ooo, one thousand years after Finn and Jake. This intro features the new characters Shermy and Beth and is sung by the latter (voiced by Willow Smith).
The series regularly features songs and musical numbers. Many of the cast members—including Shada, Kenny, and Olson—sing their characters' songs. Characters often express their emotions in song; examples of this include Marceline's song "I'm Just Your Problem" (from season three's "What Was Missing") and Finn's "All Gummed Up Inside" (from season three's "Incendium"). While the series' background music is composed by Basichis and Kiefer, the songs sung by characters are often written by the storyboard artists. And while it is a general rarity, the show also occasionally refers to popular music. Early during the show's run, Frederator, Seibert's production company, occasionally uploaded demos and full versions of songs sung by the characters to their official website, and when the production crew set up a series Tumblr account, this tradition of publishing demos and full versions of songs to the public was revived. On November 20, 2015, the label Spacelab9 released a limited-edition 12" LP featuring many of Marceline's songs, which was followed by a 38-song series soundtrack in October 2016.
#### Setting and mythology
The show is set in the fictional "Land of Ooo", in a post-apocalyptic future about a thousand years after a nuclear holocaust called the "Great Mushroom War". According to Ward, the show takes place "after the bombs have fallen and magic has come back into the world". Before the series was fully developed, Ward intended the Land of Ooo to simply be "magical". After the production of the episode "Business Time", in which an iceberg containing reanimated businessmen floats to the surface of a lake, the show became explicitly post-apocalyptic; Ward said the production crew "just ran with it". Ward later described the setting as "candyland on the surface and dark underneath", noting he had never intended the Mushroom War and the post-apocalyptic elements to be "hit over the head in the show". He limited it to "cars buried underground in the background [and other elements that do not] raise any eyebrows". Ward has said the series' post-apocalyptic elements were influenced by the 1979 film Mad Max. Kenny called the way the elements are worked into the plot "very fill-in-the-blanks", and DiMaggio said, "it's been obvious the Land of Ooo has some issues".
The series has a canonical mythology—or, an overarching plot and backstory—that is expanded upon in various episodes. This mythology mainly involves the nature of the Mushroom War, the origin of the series' principal antagonist the Lich, and the backstories of several of the series' principal and recurring characters. Ward once noted that the details behind the Mushroom War and the series' dark mythology form "a story worth telling", but he also felt the show would be better off if the show "dance[d] around how heavy the back-history of Ooo is".
### LGBTQ+ representation
After the September 2011 episode "What Was Missing" hinted at romantic subtext between Marceline and Bubblegum, fans began to "ship" the two, referring to the pairing as "Bubbline". Some reviewers also discussed the possible relationship, with Kjerstin Johnson of Bitch magazine expressing hope that that show's "queer cartoon subtext" would turn into "a queer cartoon subplot". Eventually, Bubblegum and Marceline's relationship was confirmed in the season finale, "Come Along With Me", which also featured the two characters kissing. While Bubblegum seems to have dated a male character named Mr. Cream Puff, her exact sexuality, unlike Marceline's, has not been confirmed. As such, reviewers have argued that she is either bisexual, non-binary, queer, lesbian, or a combination of some of the latter, as both live in a world where "sexuality is somewhat fluid."
Much of the series' LGBTQ+ representation was the result of storyboard artist Rebecca Sugar, who soon after joining the production crew "became more aware of what we're really saying by excluding [LGBTQ] characters" from children's TV—a situation which felt "more and more dire" to her. She thus began working hard to put "LGBTQIA characters in G-rated content" in the years to follow. Zeroing in on the relationship between Marceline and Bubblegum, Sugar tried to foster their relationship. In a March 2021 Vanity Fair interview, Sugar said that she was encouraged by the "creative team to put their own life experiences into the character of Marceline," but when this led to a "romantic storyline between Marceline and Princess Bubblegum", Cartoon Network executives intervened. This moment led Sugar and the rest of the show's team to see the limit of what they could accomplish, in terms of representation. The writers initially responded to this roadblock by working queer themes into episodes as subtext to avoid controversy or network censorship, but later episodes would openly expand on these themes, bringing them to the forefront of the series' plot.
### Finale and spin-offs
During the last seasons of Adventure Time, there was talk at Cartoon Network about concluding the series. Olivia Olson, who provided the voice of Marceline, said that since this discussion wore on for a while "the ending of the show was getting stretched and stretched and stretched". Chief content officer Rob Sorcher told the Los Angeles Times of the network's decision to end the series, saying:
> Adventure Time was playing less and less on Cartoon Network, yet we were moving towards a large volume of episodes. And I really began thinking "[The end] can't come quickly as a sudden company decision, it needs to be a conversation over a period of time." And it did also strike me that if we don't wind this up soon, we're going to have a generation of fans graduate through the [television] demo[graphic that Cartoon Network targets] and we won't have completed a thought for them.
Consequently, on September 29, 2016, Cartoon Network confirmed that the series would conclude after its tenth season. The final episode of the series is a special, titled "Come Along with Me;" the special was written and storyboarded by Tom Herpich, Steve Wolfhard, Seo Kim, Somvilay Xayaphone, Hanna K. Nyström, Aleks Sennwald, and Sam Alden, and Graham Falk. The story was developed by Herpich, Wolfhard, Ashly Burch, showrunner Adam Muto, head writer Kent Osborne, Jack Pendarvis, Julia Pott, and series creator Pendleton Ward.
`Former head background designer Ghostshrimp returned after having officially left the series during the fourth season.`
According to Osborne, Cartoon Network provided the writers with "an opportunity to spend a lot of time thinking about the finale" before production ended. In an interview with TV Guide, Muto explained that the show's writers used many of the episodes preceding the finale to conclude minor character story arcs "so we wouldn't have to cram too much in at the very end here." This allowed the finale itself to be "less dense" by simply "hitting the big [beats] and then finding vignettes for all the characters ... so we could get snapshots of where they could end up." According to Pendarvis, storyline writing for the series ended in mid-November 2016, with the last storyline meeting being held on November 21.
`A tweet by Osborne revealed that the series' final script was pitched to storyboarders, with Alden and Nyström in attendance, on November 28.`
`This episode was then pitched to the show's producers during the third week of December 2016.`
`Voice recording for the episode ended on January 31, 2017, as confirmed by a number of cast members, including Maria Bamford and Andy Milonakis. The series finale aired on September 3, 2018, receiving a largely positive reception.`
Around a year later, on October 23, 2019, Cartoon Network announced that four hour-long specials—collectively titled Adventure Time: Distant Lands—would air on HBO Max. The specials aired between 2020 and 2021. On August 17, 2021, it was announced that a second spin-off, Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake, focusing on the gender-swapped Fionna and Cake characters, was ordered by HBO Max.
## Broadcast and ratings
### Episodes
Each Adventure Time episode is about eleven minutes in length; pairs of episodes are often telecast in order to fill a half-hour program time slot. Before the official debut of the first season, Cartoon Network aired both "Business Time" and "Evicted!" on March 11 and 18, respectively, advertising these showings as "previews" of the series-to-come. The show officially debuted with "Slumber Party Panic" on April 5, 2010.
During the latter part of its run, the show began to experiment with the miniseries format. The first of these was Stakes (2015), which aired during the show's seventh season. The following miniseries, Islands (2017) aired as part of the eighth season. The third and final miniseries, Elements (2017), aired during the show's ninth season.
The show's seventh season was originally intended to comprise 39 episodes, ranging from "Bonnie & Neddy" to "Reboot". However, when it came time to upload the seventh season onto streaming sites like CartoonNetwork.com, Cartoon Network chose to end the season with the episode "The Thin Yellow Line", for a total of 26 episodes. This new episode count for the season was cemented by the release of the complete seventh season DVD on July 18, 2017, which included episodes "Bonnie & Neddy" through "The Thin Yellow Line". As such, the episode and season number sequence is accordingly changed, as follows:
For its first six seasons, episodes regularly aired once a week. Starting in November 2014, the show began to air new episodes via "bombs", or weeks in which new episodes debuted every day. This change in airing style disrupted the viewing patterns of some fans, as Dave Trumbore of Collider explained: "Back when [the show] was regularly airing in a more traditional schedule, it was a little easier to keep track of the completely insane episodes full of half-explained mythology and lots and lots of non-sequiturs. During the last few seasons, however, [when] the episodes started to arrive in more of a scattershot fashion scheduled around multi-part specials [it became easier to miss] the random airings of certain episodes".
The series' initial run concluded in 2018, after the airing of its tenth season. Reruns have aired on Boomerang and Adult Swim.
### Ratings
Upon its debut, Adventure Time was a ratings success for Cartoon Network. In March 2013, it was reported that the show averaged roughly 2 to 3 million viewers an episode. According to a 2012 report by Nielsen, the show consistently ranked first in its time slot among boys aged 2–14. The show premiered on April 5, 2010, and was watched by 2.5 million viewers. The episode was a ratings success. According to a press release by Cartoon Network, the episode's time slot saw triple-digit percentage increases from the previous year. The program was viewed by 1.661 million children aged 2–11, which marked a 110 percent increase from the previous year's figures. It was watched by 837,000 children aged 9–14, a 239 percent increase on the previous year's figures.
Between the second and sixth seasons, the show's ratings continued to grow; the second-season premiere was watched by 2.001 million viewers, the third-season premiere by 2.686 million, the fourth-season premiere by 2.655 million, the fifth-season premiere by 3.435 million, and the sixth-season premiere by 3.321 million. The show's seventh-season opener took a substantial ratings tumble, being watched by only 1.07 million viewers. Likewise, the eighth-, ninth-, and tenth-season premieres were watched by only 1.13, 0.71, and 0.77 million viewers, respectively. The series finale, "Come Along with Me", was viewed by 0.92 million viewers and scored a 0.25 Nielsen rating in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic, which means the episode was seen by 0.25 percent of all individuals aged 18 to 49 years old who were watching television at the time of the episode's airing.
### Home media and streaming service
On September 27, 2011, Cartoon Network released the region 1 DVD My Two Favorite People, which features a selection of twelve episodes from the series' first two seasons. Following this, several other region-1 compilation DVDs have been released, including: It Came from the Nightosphere (2012), Jake vs. Me-Mow (2012), Fionna and Cake (2013), Jake the Dad (2013), The Suitor (2014), Princess Day (2014), Adventure Time and Friends (2014), Finn the Human (2014), Frost & Fire (2015), The Enchiridion (2015), Stakes (2016), Card Wars (2016), and Islands (2017). All of the seasons have been released on DVD, and the first six have been released domestically on Blu-ray. A box set containing the entire series was released on DVD on April 30, 2019.
On March 30, 2013, the first season of Adventure Time was made available on the Netflix Instant Watch service for online streaming; the second season was made available on March 30, 2014. Both seasons were removed from Netflix on March 30, 2015. The series was made available for streaming via Hulu on May 1, 2015.
While in the United States, HBO Max becomes the primary platform to watch Adventure Time: Distant Lands, there are debuts of "BMO," the first special of the spin-off series, in different countries and regions in respective Cartoon Network channels worldwide, on different dates mainly in 2020; such as October 24 (Turkey), October 25 (France), November 21 (the United Kingdom), December 12 (Germany, Australia, and Taiwan), and December 27 (Russia). In South Korea, the debut was on January 1, 2021.
## Reception
### Critical reception
The show has received universal acclaim from critics. The A.V. Club reviewer Zack Handlen called it "a terrific show [that] fits beautifully in that gray area between kid and adult entertainment in a way that manages to satisfy both a desire for sophisticated (i.e., weird) writing and plain old silliness".
Adventure Time has been complimented for its resemblance to cartoons of the past. In an article for the Los Angeles Times, television critic Robert Lloyd compared the series to "the sort of cartoons they made when cartoons themselves were young and delighted in bringing all things to rubbery life". Robert Mclaughlin of Den of Geek expressed a similar sentiment when he wrote that Adventure Time "is the first cartoon in a long time that is pure imagination". He complimented the show for "its non-reliance on continually referencing pop culture". Eric Kohn of IndieWire said the show "represents the progress of [cartoon] medium" in the current decade.
A number of reviews have positively compared the series and its creators to other culturally significant works and individuals, respectively. In 2013, Entertainment Weekly reviewer Darren Franich called the series "a hybrid sci-fi/fantasy/horror/musical/fairy tale, with echoes of Calvin and Hobbes, Hayao Miyazaki, Final Fantasy, Richard Linklater, Where the Wild Things Are, and the music video you made with your high school garage band". Emily Nussbaum of The New Yorker praised Adventure Time's unique approach to emotion, humor, and philosophy by likening it to "World of Warcraft as recapped by Carl Jung". Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club concluded that the show was "basically what would happen if you asked a bunch of 12-year-olds to make a cartoon, only it's the best possible version of that, like if all the 12-year-olds were super geniuses and some of them were Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and the Marx Brothers".
Adventure Time's willingness to explore dark, sad, and complex issues has received praise. Kohn applauded the fact that the show "toys with an incredibly sad subtext". Novelist Lev Grossman, in an interview with NPR, praised the backstory of the Ice King and the exploration of his condition in the third-season episode "Holly Jolly Secrets", the fourth-season episode "I Remember You", and the fifth-season episode "Simon & Marcy", noting that his origin is "psychologically plausible". Grossman praised the way the series was able to tackle the issues of mental illness, saying: "It's very affecting. My dad has been going through having Alzheimer's, and he's forgotten so much about who he used to be. And I look at him and think this cartoon is about my father dying". Critics have suggested that the show has grown and matured as it has aged. In a review of season four, for instance, Mike LeChevallier of Slant magazine complimented the show for "growing up" with its characters. He concluded that the series has "strikingly few faults" and awarded the fourth season three-and-a-half stars out of four.
The series has been included on a number of best-of lists. Entertainment Weekly ranked it number 20 (out of 25) in a list of the "Greatest Animated TV Series". Similarly, The A.V. Club, in a non-ranked run-down of the "best animated series ever", called the series "one of the most distinctive cartoons currently on the air".
The show has also received limited criticism from reviewers. LeChevallier, in an otherwise largely positive review of the third season for Slant magazine, wrote that "the short-form format leaves some emotional substance to be desired", and that this was inevitable for a series with such short episodes. The independent cartoon scholar and critic David Perlmutter, who otherwise applauded the show's voice acting and its ability to surpass its source material, argued that the show's vacillation between high and low comedy epitomizes the fact that Cartoon Network is "unsure of what direction to pursue". He noted that "while some of [Adventure Time's] episodes work well, others [are] simply confusing". The newspaper Metro cited the show's frightening situations, occasional adult themes, and use of innuendo as reasons why parents might not want their young children watching it.
### Industry impact
Several former storyboard artists and production crew members who worked on Adventure Time have gone on to create their own series, including Patrick McHale (a former storyline writer, storyboard artist, and creative director who went on to create Over the Garden Wall), J.G. Quintel (a former storyboard artist who went on to create Regular Show and Close Enough), Pete Browngardt (a former storyboard artist who went on to create Secret Mountain Fort Awesome, Uncle Grandpa, and Looney Tunes Cartoons), Rebecca Sugar (a former storyboard artist who went on to create Steven Universe), Ian Jones-Quartey (a former storyboard revisionist and supervisor who went on to create OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes), Skyler Page (a former storyboard artist who went on to create Clarence), Julia Pott (a former storyline writer who went on to create Summer Camp Island), Kent Osborne (the show's former head story writer who went on to create Cat Agent and co-producer of Kiff for Disney Channel), and Elizabeth Ito (a former storyboard artist and supervising director who created City of Ghosts for Netflix).
Heidi MacDonald of Slate has argued that the scouting of indie comic creators employed by Adventure Time (as well as several other Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon series) has led to an "animation gold rush" in which major studios are actively seeking under-the-radar talent for their shows, with her article surmising that "your favorite brilliant indie cartoonist is probably storyboarding for Adventure Time". MacDonald also pointed out that Adventure Time has influenced the tone of modern comics, noting:
> If anything, walking around [comic] shows like SPX, I've noticed something of an Adventure Time track among many of the small press comics now coming out: Where once young cartoonists overwhelmingly produced gloomy masculine self-absorption and misanthropy in the tradition of Daniel Clowes or Chris Ware, these days many booths feature fantasy epics with colorful characters and invented worlds heavy on the talking animals. It shouldn't be surprising that up-and-coming cartoonists are absorbing the Adventure Time aesthetic. A 20-year-old making comics now could have been watching the show since she was 15, after all.
In an interview with Paste magazine, Rebecca Sugar explained that working on Adventure Time and connecting with indie and underground comic artists who worked on the show (like Ward, McHale and Muto) was a creative game-changer, as they told her to do what she would do when drawing comics and to not hold anything back. She argued that many of the recent development in animation were inspired by what the show was able to do by being "very artist-driven" and allowing independent comic artists to have a major say in the direction of episodes.
### Academic interest
Adventure Time has attracted academic interest for its presentation of gender and gender roles. Emma A. Jane, an academic from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, said that the two main characters are male, and many episodes involve them engaging in violent acts to save princesses, but "Finn and Jake are part of an expansive ensemble cast of characters who are anything but stereotypical and who populate a program which subverts many traditional gender-related paradigms". She said the show features "roughly equal numbers of female and male characters in a protagonist, antagonist, and minor roles"; includes characters with no fixed gender; uses "gendered 'design elements'" such as eyelashes and hair to illustrate character traits rather than gender; equally distributes traits regardless of gender; privileges found, adoptive families or extended families; frames gender in ways that suggest it is fluid, and features elements of queer and transgender sub-text. Carolyn Leslie, writing in Screen, agrees, saying, "despite having two male leads, Adventure Time is particularly strong when it comes to questioning and challenging gender stereotypes". She uses Princess Bubblegum, BMO, and Fionna and Cake as examples of characters who refuse to be readily categorized and genderized.
The first non-fiction book to scholarly study the series was Adventure Time and Philosophy (2015), edited by Nicolas Michaud. Published by Open Court Publishing Company, this work considers Adventure Time from a variety of angles, using the show as a way to explore different philosophical ideas. In July 2020, independent scholar Paul Thomas released a book entitled Exploring the Land of Ooo that explicated the show's production history; an expanded and updated version of the book is slated for release in 2023 by the University Press of Mississippi.
### Fandom
Since its debut, Adventure Time has developed a strong following among children, teenagers, and adults; according to A.V. Club critic Noel Murray, fans are drawn to Adventure Time because of "the show's silly humor, imaginative stories, and richly populated world". While the show is often described as having a cult following, Eric Kohn of IndieWire said that the series has "started to look like one of the biggest television phenomenons of the decade". According to Alex Heigl of People magazine, "The show's fandom is especially Internet-savvy as well, with huge communities on Reddit, Imgur and Tumblr, who swap GIFs, fan art and theories with fervent regularity". In 2016, a study by The New York Times of the 50 TV shows with the most Facebook Likes found that Adventure Time "is the most popular show among the young in our data—just over two-thirds of 'likes' come from viewers [aged] 18–24".
The show is popular at fan conventions, such as the San Diego Comic-Con. Reporter Emma-Lee Moss said, "This year's [2014] Comic-Con schedule reflected Adventure Time's growing success, with several screenings [as well as] a dramatic reading with the show's voice talent". The show is also popular with cosplayers, or performance artists who wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent characters from the Adventure Time universe. Moss wrote, "Looking into the crowd, it was clear that [Finn's] distinctive blue shirt and white hat were being mirrored by hundreds of Cosplayers, male and female". In an interview, Olivia Olson (who voices the character Marceline) said, "Literally, anywhere you look, anywhere in your range, you're going to see at least two people dressed up like Finn. It's crazy".
### Accolades
## Related media
### Comic books
On November 19, 2011, KaBoom! Studios announced plans for an Adventure Time comic book series written by independent webcomic creator Ryan North, who wrote the series Dinosaur Comics. The series launched on February 8, 2012, with art by Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb. In October 2014, it was revealed that North had left the comic series after three years. His duties were assumed by Christopher Hastings, the creator of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. This comic book line ended in April 2018 with its seventy-fifth issue, which North returned to co-write.
After the success of the original comic book line, several spin-off mini-series were launched. Some of the comic series are as follows:
A separate line of comics officially denoted as graphic novels, have also been released. Books in this line are:
### Other literature
Other Adventure Time-themed books have also been released. The Adventure Time Encyclopaedia, published on July 22, 2013, was written by comedian Martin Olson, father of Olivia Olson and the voice of recurring character Hunson Abadeer. This was followed by Adventure Time: The Enchiridion & Marcy's Super Secret Scrapbook!!!, which was released on October 6, 2015. Written by Martin and Olivia Olson, it is presented as a combination of the Enchiridion and Marceline's secret diary. An official Art of ... book, titled The Art of Ooo was published on October 14, 2014. It contains interviews with cast and crew members and opens with an introduction by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. Two volumes with collections of the show's title cards have also been released, as has a cookbook with recipes inspired by the show, and a series of prose novels published under the header "Epic Tales from Adventure Time" (which includes The Untamed Scoundrel, Queen of Rogues, The Lonesome Outlaw, and The Virtue of Ardor, all of which were published under the pseudonym "T. T. MacDangereuse").
### Video games
The series has spawned several major video game releases. The first game based on the series, Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why'd You Steal Our Garbage?!!, was announced by Pendleton Ward on his Twitter account in March 2012. The game was developed by WayForward Technologies for Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS, and was released by D3 Publisher on November 20, 2012. A year later, the game Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I Don't Know!, which follows Finn and Jake as they strive "to save the Candy Kingdom by exploring the mysterious Secret Royal Dungeon deep below the Land of Ooo", was released in November 2013. On November 18, 2014, Adventure Time: The Secret of the Nameless Kingdom was released for Nintendo 3DS, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and Microsoft Windows. In October 2015, the fourth major Adventure Time video game, titled Finn & Jake Investigations, was released for 3DS, Windows and other consoles. It is the first in the series to feature full 3D graphics. Another game, Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion, was released for the PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Windows, and Xbox One in July 2018. The game was published by Outright Games, developed by Climax Studios, and features the show's original cast. That game won the award for "Performance in a Comedy, Lead" with John DiMaggio at the National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers Awards, in which Jeremy Shada was also nominated for the same category.
Various other minor video games have also been released. Several, including Legends of Ooo, Fionna Fights, Beemo – Adventure Time, and Ski Safari: Adventure Time, have been released on the iOS App Store. A game titled Finn & Jake's Quest was released on April 11, 2014, on Steam. Cartoon Network also released a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game titled Adventure Time: Battle Party on Cartoon Network's official site, on June 23, 2014. In April 2015, two downloadable content packs for LittleBigPlanet 3 on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 were released; one contained Adventure Time costumes, while the other contained a level kit with decorations, stickers, music, objects, a background, and a bonus Fionna costume. A virtual reality (VR) game entitled Adventure Time: Magic Man's Head Games was also released to Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR. A second VR game, entitled Adventure Time: I See Ooo, was released on September 29, 2016. In that same month, Adventure Time characters were added to the Lego Dimensions game. Finn and Jake became playable characters in the video game Cartoon Network: Battle Crashers which was released for the Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One on November 8, 2016 and the Nintendo Switch on October 31, 2017.
### Proposed film
In February 2015, it was reported that a theatrical Adventure Time film was being developed by Cartoon Network Studios, Frederator Films, Vertigo Entertainment, and Warner Animation Group. According to reports, the film would be executive-produced and written by Pendleton Ward, and produced by Roy Lee and Chris McKay. In October 2015, series producer Adam Muto confirmed that series creator Pendleton Ward was "working on the premise" for the film, but that there was "nothing official to announce yet". On July 22, 2018, Muto noted that "an [Adventure Time] movie was never officially announced". On August 31, 2018, Muto said the finale of the show would not affect a potential movie, nor would the finale lead directly into a film. He also noted that "all the lore and stuff would not work for a first time viewer", suggesting that the film would have to hold well on its own to be successful.
### Other appearances
A variety of officially licensed merchandise—including action figures, role-playing toys, bedding, dishware, and various other products—have been released. Since the dramatic increase in popularity of the series, many graphic T-shirts have been officially licensed through popular clothing retailers. Pendleton Ward hosted T-shirt designing contests on the websites of both We Love Fine and Threadless. Other shirts can be purchased directly from Cartoon Network's store. A collectible card game called Card Wars, inspired by the fourth-season episode of the same name, has been released. On March 11, 2016, it was announced by Lego via Lego Ideas that an official Adventure Time Lego set from an idea by site user, aBetterMonkey, had met voting qualifications and was approved to be produced in cooperation with Cartoon Network. The set was released in January 2017.
On July 21, 2013, Taiwan High Speed Rail and the Taiwan branch of Cartoon Network worked together on a project called "Cartoon Express" (Chinese: 歡樂卡通列車). The entire train was covered with characters from various Cartoon Network shows (including The Amazing World of Gumball, The Powerpuff Girls, Ben 10, and Regular Show), and the two sides of the train is painted with Finn and Jake respectively. Throughout the project, there were over 1,400 runs of the train and over 1.3 million passengers were transported. Near the end, the Taiwan High Speed Rail also sold postcards as souvenirs for sale since August 23, 2014, and the project eventually ended on September 9, 2014. In addition, Cartoon Network established a waterpark named Cartoon Network Amazone in Chonburi, Thailand; it opened on October 3, 2014. Promoting the waterpark, Thai Smile painted Finn, Jake, Princess Bubblegum and Marceline on the planes.
"Leela and the Genestalk", an episode from the seventh season of the animated Comedy Central program Futurama, features a cameo of Finn and Jake, with DiMaggio (who voices Bender in Futurama) reprising his role as Jake for the appearance. Similarly, the twenty-eighth season premiere of the Fox series The Simpsons, entitled "Monty Burns' Fleeing Circus", includes a couch gag that parodies the title sequence to Adventure Time, complete with Pendleton Ward himself singing a spoof of the Adventure Time theme song. According to Al Jean, the executive producer of The Simpsons, "[The couch gag] was the brain child of Mike Anderson, our supervising director ... It's a really beautiful, elaborate crossover".
On the Portuguese talk show 5 Para A Meia-Noite, the humorist Eduardo Madeira, who portrayed a hater called Osório, used Princess Bubblegum and Marceline to mock the Eurovision Song Contest 2018's Portuguese contestants, Cláudia Pascoal and Isaura.
In the 2016 horror film Better Watch Out, the two boys in the film, Luke the antagonist and his friend Garrett, are fans of the series, and after subduing Luke's babysitter and using drugs and alcohol, the two boys play Fuck, marry, kill using the "Adventure Time chicks" as options. Luke says that he would, "[f]uck Princess Bubblegum," to which Garrett replies, "Not Marceline?" Luke then gives reasons for his choice.
|
21,451,929 |
FC Porto in international football
| 1,173,476,745 | null |
[
"FC Porto",
"Portuguese football clubs in international competitions"
] |
Futebol Clube do Porto, an association football team based in Porto, is the most decorated Portuguese team in international club competitions. They have won two UEFA Champions League titles (in 1987, as the European Cup, and 2004), two UEFA Europa League titles (in 2003, as the UEFA Cup, and 2011), one UEFA Super Cup (in 1987), and two Intercontinental Cups (in 1987 and 2004), for a total of seven international trophies. In addition, they were Cup Winners' Cup runners-up in 1984 – their first European final – and lost three other UEFA Super Cup matches, in 2003, 2004, and 2011.
Porto first participated in international competitions in 1956, when they qualified for the second season of the European Cup as the domestic league winners. They lost their first two European matches against Athletic Bilbao and were eliminated from the competition. Porto then debuted in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (not organised by UEFA) in 1962–63, in the Cup Winners' Cup in 1964–65, and in the inaugural editions of the UEFA Cup (Fairs Cup successor) and UEFA Champions League (European Cup successor) in 1971–72 and 1992–93, respectively. The club has qualified for UEFA competitions every season since 1974–75, and shares the second place in UEFA Champions League group stage appearances with Bayern Munich (24), one less than Barcelona and Real Madrid.
Until their 1986–87 European Cup success, Porto were the only of Portugal's "Big Three" teams without international silverware – Benfica had won two consecutive European Cup titles in 1961 and 1962, and Sporting CP were Cup Winners' Cup victors in 1964. As European champions, Porto contested the UEFA Super Cup and the Intercontinental Cup, lifting both trophies in their first appearance. To this date, they remain the only Portuguese team to have won either of these trophies or the UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League. As of the 2020–21 season, Porto occupies the ninth place in the all-time European Cup and UEFA Champions League club rankings, and is the best placed Portuguese team in the UEFA club ranking.
Tomislav Ivić and José Mourinho are Porto's most decorated head coaches, each with two international titles. Former Portuguese international goalkeeper and club captain Vítor Baía holds the record for the most appearances in international competitions (99), while Colombian striker Radamel Falcao is the club's top goalscorer, with 22 goals.
## History
### Early decades (1956–77)
Porto first participated in international club competitions in 1956, when they took part in the second edition of the European Cup. Qualification for this competition – contested between Europe's national champions – was achieved after Porto secured their fourth Primeira Divisão title in the previous season. Their debut was in a preliminary round tie against Spanish champions Atlético Bilbao. At their new home ground, the Estádio das Antas, Porto lost the first match 2–1 and were eliminated a week later in Bilbao, after a 3–2 defeat. Porto returned to this tournament two years later but fell at the same stage. After three seasons without qualifying for European competitions, Porto finished the 1961–62 league as runners-up and entered the non-UEFA-affiliated Inter-Cities Fairs Cup for the first time in 1962–63. They were knocked out in the first round by Dinamo Zagreb, who secured a draw in Yugoslavia after winning in Portugal. Porto returned to the Fairs Cup in the following season, but failed to advance past the first round.
The Cup Winners' Cup was a UEFA competition open to domestic cup winners (or losing finalists, if the winners had already qualified for the European Cup). Porto qualified for this tournament for the first time in 1964–65, after losing the 1964 Portuguese Cup final against champions Benfica. Porto progressed from the first round of a European competition for the first time, after a 4–0 aggregate victory over French Cup winners Lyon, but fell in the next round to 1860 Munich. At the end of that season, Porto finished runners-up to Benfica in the league and qualified for the following season's Fairs Cup. The club's performance was similar to that of the previous campaign: a first-round elimination of a French team (Stade Français) followed by a second-round loss to a German team (Hannover 96), which included a 5–0 away defeat that was, at the time, Porto's heaviest in Europe. They took part in the Fairs Cup in the following two seasons, but could not progress beyond the first round. In the first case, Porto were eliminated by the flip of a coin, after extra-time was not enough to break the deadlock with Bordeaux.
In 1968, the club won their third Portuguese Cup and qualified for the 1968–69 Cup Winners' Cup. As in previous years, they were unable to get past the second round, losing 4–1 on aggregate to Slovan Bratislava. Porto's last participation in the Fairs Cup, in 1969–70, also ended in the second round, with a defeat against holders Newcastle United. Domestically, Porto finished the league in an all-time low ninth place, thus failing to qualify for European competition in the 1970–71 season. They returned the following season to participate in the inaugural edition of the UEFA Cup, which officially replaced the Fairs Cup, but their debut against Nantes led to another premature exit. Porto returned to this tournament in four of the following five seasons, the exception being 1973–74, when it failed qualification for European competitions. In the first of those seasons (1972–73), Porto reached the third round of a European competition for the first time, but were eliminated by Dynamo Dresden. They beat Barcelona in the first round, in what was the teams' first European encounter and the only time Porto eliminated the Spanish side from European competitions. In the 1975–76 UEFA Cup, Porto were again eliminated in the third round, but in the process they beat Luxembourg's Avenir Beggen with a club record home (7–0) and aggregate (10–0) win scores. In the first round of the following season's UEFA Cup, Porto were matched with Schalke 04. After a tie in the first leg, Porto squandered a 2–0 lead in the second leg, conceding three goals in the last 15 minutes, which resulted in their elimination.
### First final – Pedroto years (1977–84)
Head coach José Maria Pedroto oversaw Porto's victory over Braga in the 1977 Portuguese Cup final, which ensured the club's participation in the 1977–78 Cup Winners' Cup. After overcoming Köln in the first round, Porto met Manchester United for the first time in international club competition. Reactions to the second round draw predicted an easy task for the English team, but Porto stunned its visitors and Europe with a 4–0 win. In Old Trafford, Manchester United pressed hard and even benefited from two own goals, but their 5–2 win was insufficient to prevent a shocking elimination at the hands of Porto. Playing in a quarter-final round for the first time, they were defeated by the eventual competition winners, Anderlecht.
Porto finished the season at the top of the Primeira Liga, ending a 19-year drought of league titles. In their return to the European Cup, they were eliminated in the first round after suffering their heaviest defeat in European competitions: 6–1 against AEK Athens. Porto secured back-to-back league titles to participate in the 1979–80 European Cup. They eliminated Milan in the first round, with a second-leg 1–0 win at San Siro, and advanced to a second-round contest with Real Madrid. Two goals from Fernando Gomes granted a 2–1 home win for Porto, but Real's goal proved crucial to secure their qualification on the away goals rule, after a 1–0 win in Madrid. Porto spent their following five seasons competing either in the UEFA Cup or Cup Winners' Cup. In the 1980–81 and 1982–83 UEFA Cup editions, Porto was eliminated in the second round by Grasshoppers and Anderlecht, respectively. In between, the club sailed into the 1981–82 Cup Winners' Cup quarter-finals, where they were beaten by the eventual runners-up Standard Liège.
Porto lost the 1983 Portuguese Cup final to league champions Benfica, which allowed their participation in the 1983–84 Cup Winners' Cup as losing cup finalists. They eliminated Dinamo Zagreb, Rangers, and Shakhtar Donetsk to reach their first European semi-final. The competition draw paired Porto with the holders Aberdeen, managed by Alex Ferguson. Taking a 1–0 lead to Pittodrie, Porto resisted to the attacking pressure of their opponents. In the 76th minute, Vermelhinho scored the only goal of the match, which confirmed Porto's place in their first European final. "We simply were not good enough against Porto", said Ferguson in the aftermath. This feat was met with such enthusiasm that the plane returning the team to Porto could not land because the runway had been invaded by supporters. The final against Juventus was contested at the former St. Jakob Stadium in Basel, where Portuguese supporters were a minority. The Italians were the favourites and started off well, taking the lead through Beniamino Vignola in the 13th minute. Seventeen minutes later, António Sousa equalised for Porto, but the Portuguese side could not prevent Zbigniew Boniek from scoring Juventus's winning goal just before half-time. Despite the defeat, this final was a stepping stone in the growth of the club's international reputation.
### First titles – Artur Jorge and Ivić years (1984–91)
Victory in the 1984 Portuguese Cup final ensured Porto's return to the Cup Winners' Cup in 1984–85, but they were surprisingly knocked out in the first round by Welsh Cup runners-up Wrexham. In January 1985, having left his job because of health problems, Pedroto died; he was succeeded by his apprentice Artur Jorge. Porto won the 1984–85 Primeira Liga and qualified for the 1985–86 European Cup, where they first beat an Ajax side guided by Johan Cruyff and featuring Ronald Koeman, Frank Rijkaard and Marco van Basten. Porto then faced Barcelona in the second round; after a 2–0 loss at Camp Nou, Juary scored all three goals of Porto's 3–1 win, which was insufficient to avoid elimination on the away goals rule.
Porto defended their league title to earn a place in the 1986–87 European Cup. They faced Malta's Rabat Ajax in the first round, but had to play their home leg away from the Estádio das Antas (in Vila do Conde), because the pitch was being lowered to increase the stadium capacity. The Maltese suffered a 9–0 defeat, which is still Porto's biggest home win for European competitions. In the second round, they played the Czechoslovak champions TJ Vítkovice; Porto lost 1–0 in Ostrava but overcame the disadvantage with a 3–0 home win. They then eliminated Brøndby of Denmark to advance to the European Cup semi-finals for the first time, where they were drawn against Dynamo Kyiv. The Soviets were considered strong favourites to progress, but Porto won both legs with a 2–1 scoreline and confirmed their second European final in four seasons.
Standing between Porto and the European title were three-time champions Bayern Munich, who knocked out Real Madrid in the other semi-final and had the odds in their favour. Moreover, Porto's centre-back Lima Pereira and striker Fernando Gomes had suffered leg injuries and were deemed unfit to play. With the final scheduled for Vienna's Praterstadion, support for the Bavarian team far outnumbered that for Porto. Bayern took the lead in the 26th minute through Ludwig Kögl and secured it until the 77th minute, when Rabah Madjer's backheel equaliser became one of the most memorable goals in European Cup finals. Three minutes later, Madjer provided the cross for Juary's match-deciding volley. This victory was celebrated in Portugal and praised by the European press, which highlighted Porto's second-half resurgence and the key contributions of Madjer, Juary and Paulo Futre in the team's success. Having witnessed their Lisbon rivals lift European trophies in the 1960s – Benfica's back-to-back European Cup wins in 1961 and 1962, and Sporting's successful Cup Winners' Cup run in 1964 – this win meant that Porto were no longer the only "Big Three" club in Portugal without international silverware.
Soon after the final, Artur Jorge left Porto to coach French team Matra Racing; his substitute was Tomislav Ivić. As European Cup winners, Porto contested the 1987 European Super Cup against Ajax, the 1986–87 Cup Winners' Cup holders. Porto won the first leg 1–0 in Amsterdam, and two months later repeated the result at home, becoming the competition's first Portuguese winners. In between, Porto traveled to Japan to contest the 1987 Intercontinental Cup against the 1987 Copa Libertadores winners, Peñarol of Uruguay. A severe snowstorm hit Tokyo on the day of the match, which nearly forced its postponement. Despite the poor weather conditions, the game went ahead. Porto took the lead just before half-time but conceded the equaliser in the final minutes of the second half. In extra-time, Madjer lobbed a ball from the midfield over Peñarol's goalkeeper; it landed on the snow a few feet away from the goal line, but with enough momentum to roll into the goal and secure Porto's (and Portugal's) first Intercontinental Cup title.
As holders, Porto were automatically qualified for the 1987–88 European Cup, but their previous season's success was not emulated as they were eliminated in the second round by Real Madrid. Ivić departed with a league title and Artur Jorge was brought back with the 1988–89 season underway. In the 1988–89 European Cup, Porto were knocked out by the holders, PSV Eindhoven, after a heavy 5–0 away defeat. Finishing second in the 1988–89 Primeira Liga, Porto entered the UEFA Cup, seven years after their last participation. They eliminated Flacăra Moreni of Romania and Valencia, before falling in the third round to Hamburg. Returning to the European Cup in 1990–91, Porto began their campaign beating the Northern Irish champions Portadown (13–1 on aggregate, including an 8–1 away win, the club's biggest in European competitions) and Dinamo București (4–0). In the quarter-finals, they faced Bayern Munich for the first time since the 1987 final. After securing a 1–1 draw in Munich, Porto were beaten 2–0 at home.
### Champions League regular (1991–2002)
Porto entered the 1991–92 Cup Winners' Cup following their seventh Portuguese Cup final win in mid-1991, but their campaign ended in the second round against Tottenham. In the 1992–93 season, UEFA renamed the European Cup to UEFA Champions League and confirmed the introduction of a round-robin group stage, tested in the previous season. Apart from 1994–95, when they competed for the last time in the Cup Winners' Cup – being eliminated on penalties in the quarter-finals against Sampdoria – Porto were present in every edition of the Champions League from its founding season to 1999–2000. In the first edition, Porto overcame two preliminary rounds to reach the group stage, where they played IFK Göteborg, Milan, and PSV Eindhoven. Two wins in six matches resulted in a third place in the group and failure to progress to the final (only accessible for the group winners). They returned the following season to the group stage and were drawn against Anderlecht, Werder Bremen, and Milan. Buoyed by a 5–0 away defeat of the Germans, Porto secured the group's runner-up place and a semi-final meeting with Barcelona. The one-legged tie was drawn to take place at Camp Nou, and ended with a 3–0 victory for the home side.
The 1995–96 UEFA Champions League participation was short-lived as Porto finished outside of their group's top two places. The following season, they were drawn into a group with Milan for the third time in four participations. Having failed to beat the Italians in their previous meetings, Porto were on the verge of suffering another defeat in San Siro, as they trailed Milan by 2–1 with 20 minutes to go. However, two goals by Mário Jardel overturned the score and sealed the win for Porto. They were confirmed as group winners after victories over IFK Göteborg and Rosenborg. In the quarter-finals, they fell to Manchester United after a 4–0 away loss. Porto did not progress past the group stage of the two subsequent Champions League seasons, coming last in 1997–98 and third in 1998–99. The club got back on track in the 1999–2000 season, overcoming two consecutive group stages to meet Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals. Having drawn 1–1 in Portugal, Bayern took an early lead in the second leg; Porto leveled the score in the 88th minute, but one minute later, the Germans scored the winning goal.
Sporting won the 1999–2000 Primeira Liga and ended Porto's chances to clinch a record sixth consecutive title. As runners-up, Porto had to go through a qualifying round to reach the 2000–01 UEFA Champions League group stage. However, a loss to Anderlecht meant elimination and consequent transfer into that season's UEFA Cup, where they were beaten in the quarter-finals by the eventual winners, Liverpool. Having lost the 2000–01 season's league title to city rivals Boavista, Porto had to start their 2001–02 Champions League participation in the second qualifying round. They defeated Welsh side Barry Town and Grasshoppers to reach the first group stage, where they finished runners-up to Juventus. In the second group stage, Porto registered four losses in six matches, finishing in the fourth and last place. Domestically, the club concluded the league in third place, just outside the Champions League qualification places. Midway through the season, Porto sacked coach Octávio Machado and hired 38-year-old Portuguese coach José Mourinho, who had led Leiria to their best-ever league finish.
### Return to glory – Mourinho years (2002–04)
Sitting fifth in the league, Porto consolidated their performances following Mourinho's arrival and registered a win–draw–loss record of 11–2–2 to climb to third place and qualify for the 2002–03 UEFA Cup. They progressed through the first four rounds with convincing wins, suffering only one defeat against French side Lens. In the quarter-finals, Porto were surprised at home with a 1–0 home defeat against Panathinaikos. In Athens, Derlei scored in the 16th minute to tie the round, and added a second goal in the first half of extra-time to propel Porto into the semi-finals. Facing Lazio at home for the first leg, Porto conceded an early goal by Claudio López. A few minutes later, Maniche's equaliser sparked a strong attacking display by the home team, which scored a further three goals to secure a significant advantage for the second leg. In Rome, a goalless draw confirmed Porto's presence in their third major European competition final, the first since their 1987 European Cup victory. Their opponents were Celtic, who had eliminated Boavista in the other semi-final to advance to their first European final since 1970.
Scheduled for 21 May 2003 at Seville's Estadio Olímpico, the 2003 UEFA Cup Final took place under an intense heat, which did not dissuade a 53,000-strong crowd of supporters, mostly in favour of the Scottish team. A contested first half was heading into half-time when, during injury time, Derlei put Porto ahead. Soon after the restart, Henrik Larsson headed Celtic's equaliser, but Dmitri Alenichev restored Porto's lead a few minutes later. Larsson again leveled the score, sending the match into extra-time. Despite Baldé's dismissal in the first half of extra-time, Celtic held on until the 115th minute, when Derlei intercepted a blocked shot and beat the goalkeeper to score the winning goal. His 12th goal in the competition confirmed him as the top scorer (ahead of Larsson), and inscribed Porto (and Portugal) into the list of UEFA Cup winners, for the first time. With their first Primeira Liga title in four years mathematically confirmed two weeks ahead of the Seville final, Mourinho then led Porto to victory in the Portuguese Cup final, against his former club, Leiria, to conclude a treble-winning season.
In late August, Porto kicked off their 2003–04 European season with a loss in the 2003 UEFA Super Cup match against the 2002–03 UEFA Champions League winners, Milan. Two weeks later, they began their 2003–04 UEFA Champions League campaign in a group comprising Real Madrid, Marseille, and Partizan. Porto qualified for the knockout phase as group runners-up, behind Real Madrid, who inflicted their only group stage defeat. The draw for the round of 16 paired Porto with Manchester United, with the first leg taking place in Portugal. In the first European club competition match at the Estádio do Dragão, Porto won 2–1 with goals from Benni McCarthy. At Old Trafford, Paul Scholes put the English side ahead in the match and in the round (advantage on away goals). On the brink of elimination, Porto earned a free kick in the 90th minute; McCarthy's shot was blocked near the line by goalkeeper Tim Howard, but Costinha caught the rebound and scored the equaliser that took Porto through to the next round. In the quarter-finals, they overcame another French team (Lyon) to advance to the Champions League semi-finals for the first time since 1994. Porto faced Deportivo La Coruña, who had convincingly eliminated the previous season's finalists, Juventus and Milan. A goalless first leg match in Portugal postponed the decision to the Estadio Riazor, where a penalty kick converted by Derlei confirmed Porto's second major European final in two consecutive seasons. The other finalists were AS Monaco, who had eliminated Real Madrid and Chelsea.
The Arena AufSchalke in Gelsenkirchen hosted the final, which provided one of the most lopsided results in European Cup and Champions League finals, as Porto defeated Monaco 3–0. Despite the score, Monaco were a pressing side and started off better with dangerous incursions into Porto's penalty area by captain Ludovic Giuly, who was replaced midway through the first half due to injury. In the 38th minute, Carlos Alberto opened the score for Porto. Despite one goal behind and without playmaker Giuly, Monaco created chances in the second half, but Alenichev and Deco set each other up for the second and third goals, respectively. Porto won UEFA's premier competition for the second time and became the second club to win the UEFA Cup and the European Champion Club's Cup in consecutive seasons, after Liverpool's 1975–76 UEFA Cup and 1976–77 European Cup wins. This was Mourinho's last match for Porto; a week later, he was presented as Chelsea's manager.
### Post-Mourinho transition and Ferreira years (2004–10)
Champions League success struck a hard blow in the team, which saw its influential coach and key players leave to clubs from prominent European leagues. To replace Mourinho, Porto signed Luigi Delneri but the Italian was sacked before overseeing an official match, and his place was taken by Víctor Fernández. His tenure did not start off well, as Porto lost the UEFA Super Cup for the second time in two years, going down 2–1 against Valencia. Filling the Champions League title-holder spot in the group stage of the following season's tournament, Porto were drawn together with Chelsea, which meant Mourinho's return to the Estádio do Dragão. In the last group match, they hosted the Londoners in need of a win to assure qualification. As Damien Duff put Chelsea ahead, Porto were at risk of becoming the first holders not to get past the group stage, but goals from Diego and McCarthy saved Porto from premature elimination. Nevertheless, the defending champions were subsequently knocked out in the round of 16, after losing 4–2 on aggregate against Inter. Before this tie, Porto returned to Japan to contest the last edition of the Intercontinental Cup, 17 years after their first triumph. They dominated Colombia's Once Caldas for most of the 90 minutes plus extra-time, but were unable to score. It took 18 kicks from the penalty mark to decide the match 8–7 for Porto and give the club their second and last title in this competition.
Despite the managerial instability – Fernández was replaced by José Couceiro soon after their Champions League elimination – and weak performances in league matches, Porto finished runners-up to Benfica and secured qualification for the 2005–06 UEFA Champions League group stage. Dutch coach Co Adriaanse was appointed as the new coach for the 2005–06 season, and although his team delivered domestically – reclaiming both Portuguese league and Cup titles – it disappointed in the Champions League, as Porto finished last of their group, with one win and three losses. In reaction to Adriaanse's resignation in the summer of 2006, the club signed experienced coach Jesualdo Ferreira from Boavista. Porto qualified from their Champions League group with the same points as Arsenal, but behind on head-to-head standings. Paired with Chelsea in the round of 16, Porto drew the first leg match in Portugal but were eliminated with a 2–1 loss in London.
Porto won three consecutive Primeira Liga titles with Ferreira, ensuring their presence in the three subsequent Champions League seasons. In 2007–08, Porto fell again in the round of 16, losing to Schalke 04 in a penalty shootout. In the following season's round of 16, they eliminated Atlético Madrid on away goals and progressed to a quarter-final tie with Manchester United. A two-all draw in Manchester gave Porto the upper hand in the round, but a Cristiano Ronaldo goal in the opening minutes of the return leg ended their European run. The 2009–10 UEFA Champions League season was Ferreira's last in charge of Porto, and like in previous years, he successfully guided the team past the group stage. In the round of 16, a 2–1 home win over Arsenal was obliterated by a 5–0 defeat in London, which included a hat-trick from Nicklas Bendtner. Domestically, Porto failed to win a fifth consecutive league title and their third-place finish excluded them from competing in the 2010–11 Champions League. However, victory in the Portuguese Cup final confirmed the club's entry in the play-off round of the 2010–11 UEFA Europa League.
### Recent years (2010–present)
Ferreira stepped down at the end of the 2009–10 season and was replaced by André Villas-Boas, a former assistant of Mourinho at Porto, Chelsea, and Internazionale. In a single season, Villas-Boas guided the team to a record-matching four titles, including victory in the 2010–11 UEFA Europa League. Their triumphant campaign started in the play-off round, where they overcame Belgian side Genk to reach the group stage. Porto topped their group undefeated, only dropping points against Beşiktaş. In the round of 32, despite a second-leg home loss, they eliminated the 2005–06 and 2006–07 UEFA Cup winners Sevilla, setting up a tie with CSKA Moscow. Porto defeated the Russians in both legs and advanced to the quarter-finals, where they were paired against another Muscovite club, this time Spartak Moscow. Two prolific displays, which included a hat-trick by Radamel Falcao, sealed a 10–3 aggregate win for Porto. In the semi-finals, Falcao went one better and scored four goals in a first-leg 5–1 win against Villarreal, which all but confirmed the club's fourth major European final. The Dublin final was an all-Portuguese affair between Porto and Primeira Liga rivals Braga. Contrasting with previous matches in the tournament, Porto's performance was more contained and victory was secured with a single goal by Falcao, who became the competition's top scorer.
In June 2011, Villas-Boas left Porto to become Chelsea's manager. He took his technical staff to London, except his assistant coach Vítor Pereira, who became the club's new coach. His first European match was against Barcelona, for the 2011 UEFA Super Cup. In their third appearance in the Monaco showpiece match, Porto left once again as runners-up, after losing 2–0. They did not get through the 2011–12 UEFA Champions League group stage, after conceding defeats to APOEL and Zenit Saint Petersburg, the eventual group winners and runners-up. Transferred to the UEFA Europa League round of 32, the defending champions were knocked out by Manchester City with a 6–1 aggregate loss. As 2011–12 Primeira Liga winners, Porto assured their return to the Champions League in the following season. Having finished second to Paris Saint-Germain in a group containing Dinamo Zagreb and Dynamo Kiev, Porto qualified to the round of 16, where they faced tournament debutants Málaga. Unable to capitalize on a first-leg 1–0 advantage, Porto lost 2–0 at La Rosaleda Stadium and were eliminated. The club secured its third consecutive league title in the last matchday, ensuring a place in the 2013–14 UEFA Champions League group stage. Having finished third in their group, behind Atlético Madrid and Zenit Saint Petersburg, Porto were demoted to the UEFA Europa League; they were eliminated in the quarter-finals by eventual winners Sevilla.
Porto failed a fourth successive league title by finishing third in the 2013–14 Primeira Liga, and therefore had to contest the following season's Champions League play-off round. They overcame French side Lille to reach the group stage, and won their group ahead of Shakhtar Donetsk, Athletic Bilbao and Belarusian champions BATE Borisov. During this stage, Porto recorded their biggest win in this competition after beating BATE Borisov 6–0 at the Estádio do Dragão. The team then eliminated Basel to reach the quarter-finals for the first time since 2008–09. Drawn against Bayern Munich, Porto hosted the German champions for the first leg and grabbed a shocking 3–1 win, with goals from Ricardo Quaresma and Jackson Martínez. A week later, in Munich, Porto were eliminated after suffering an all-time club record-matching 6–1 away defeat (tied with the loss to AEK Athens, and 5–0 losses to Hannover 96, PSV Eindhoven, Arsenal, and Liverpool). A runner-up finish in the 2014–15 Primeira Liga earned Porto's fifth consecutive participation in the Champions League group stage in 2015–16. After a positive start, defeats in the last two matches against Dynamo Kyiv and Chelsea relegated the club to that season's Europa League round of 32, where they were knocked out by Borussia Dortmund.
In the 2016–17 edition, Porto finished second in the group stage, behind English side Leicester City. In the round of 16, Porto faced Juventus. They lost the first match (at home) 0–2 and later, in Italy, suffered a 1–0 defeat in the second leg, ending Porto's run in the Champions League. In the following 2017–18 edition, Porto once again qualified for the round of 16 and encountered another English team, Liverpool. They were defeated 5–0 in the first leg and managed a 0–0 draw in the second. In the 2018–19 UEFA Champions League, FC Porto reached the group stages where they finished atop Group D, winning five matches and drawing one out of the six games. In the round of 16, Porto traveled to Italy to face Roma in the first leg, losing 2–1. In the second leg, playing at home, they avenged their loss in Italy, defeating Roma 3–1 after extra time and progressing to the next phase. In the quarterfinals, they met Liverpool, the team that had eliminated them in the previous edition. Porto lost 2–0 in the first leg and 4–1 in the second.
In the 2019–20 edition, Porto failed to qualify for the Champions League and were relegated to the Europa League. They progressed to the round of 32 after finishing first in Group G. There, they were eventually knocked out by Bayer Leverkusen with an aggregate score of 5–2. After becoming the national champions in the 2019–20 season, Porto qualified for the 2020–21 edition of the Champions League. They finished the group stages in second place in Group C, only behind Manchester City. In the round of 16, they faced Juventus, which featured star player Cristiano Ronaldo. In the first leg, Porto achieved their first victory over Juventus, winning 2–1. This win marked Porto's 115th win in the top European competition, making them the most successful Portuguese football team in this regard, surpassing Benfica's 114 victories. In the second leg, playing at Juventus's home ground, Porto lost 3–2 (making it 4–4 on aggregate) but advanced to the quarter-finals due to the away goals rule, despite playing with one man down from the 54th minute after Taremi received a red card. Both goals for Porto were scored by Sérgio Oliveira. The club then progressed to the quarterfinals where they faced Chelsea, marking their 11th appearance in the quarters of the top European club competition, and the eighth since it was renamed the Champions League. Losing the first leg at home 2–0, Chelsea secured a significant advantage with two away goals. In the second leg, Porto managed to secure a victory at Chelsea's home ground with a score of 1–0, a positive outcome but not enough to overturn the aggregate result from the two matches. Finishing the Portuguese championship of 2020–21 in second place, Porto qualified for the group stage of the 2021–22 UEFA Champions League.
## Records
Key:
- Pld = Matches played
- W = Matches won
- D = Matches drawn
- L = Matches lost
- GF = Goals for
- GA = Goals against
- GD = Goal difference
- F = Finals
- FW = Finals won
- FL = Finals lost
- GS = Group stage
- GS2 = Second group stage
- PO = Play-off round
- PR = Preliminary round
- Q3 = Third qualifying round
- QF = Quarter-finals
- R1 = First round
- R2 = Second round
- R3 = Third round
- R16 = Round of 16
- R32 = Round of 32
- SF = Semi-finals
- = Winners
- = Runners-up
### Team, coaches and players
- First match: 1–2 vs Athletic Bilbao, 1956–57 European Cup preliminary round (20 September 1956)
- First goal: José Maria, against Athletic Bilbao
- Biggest home win: 9–0 vs Rabat Ajax, 1986–87 European Cup first round (17 September 1986)
- Biggest away win: 8–1 vs Portadown, 1990–91 European Cup first round (3 October 1990)
- Biggest home loss: 0–5 vs Liverpool, 2017–18 UEFA Champions League round of 16 (14 February 2018)
- Biggest away loss: 1–6
- vs AEK Athens, 1978–79 European Cup first round (13 September 1978)
- vs Bayern Munich, 2014–15 UEFA Champions League quarter-finals (21 April 2015)
- Coach with most matches: Jesualdo Ferreira, 34
- Coach with most titles: Tomislav Ivić and José Mourinho, 2
- Player with most total appearances: Vítor Baía, 99
- Player with most consecutive appearances: Ljubinko Drulović, 50
- Player with most goals scored: Radamel Falcao, 22
### By season
### By competition
### Finals
Matches won after regular time (90 minutes of play), extra time (aet) or a penalty shoot-out (p) are highlighted in green, while losses are highlighted in red.
## Honours
## See also
- Football in Portugal
- S.L. Benfica in international football
- Sporting CP in European football
- S.C. Braga in European football
|
242,464 |
Arthur Gould (rugby union)
| 1,163,632,397 |
Welsh rugby union player
|
[
"1864 births",
"1919 deaths",
"Deaths from bleeding",
"London Welsh RFC players",
"Newport RFC players",
"Richmond F.C. players",
"Rugby union centres",
"Rugby union controversies",
"Rugby union players from Newport, Wales",
"Sports scandals in Wales",
"Wales Rugby Union officials",
"Wales international rugby union players",
"Wales rugby union captains",
"Welsh people of English descent",
"Welsh rugby union players",
"Welsh rugby union referees"
] |
Arthur Joseph "Monkey" Gould (10 October 1864 – 2 January 1919) was a Welsh international rugby union centre and fullback who was most associated as a club player with Newport Rugby Football Club. He won 27 caps for Wales, 18 as captain, and critics consider him the first superstar of Welsh rugby. A talented all-round player and champion sprinter, Gould could side-step and kick expertly with either foot. He never ceased practising to develop his fitness and skills, and on his death was described as "the most accomplished player of his generation".
Following the withdrawal of their regular fullback, Newport RFC first selected Gould in 1882, when he was 18. He was never dropped from the side thereafter and played regularly until he retired in 1898. Gould played for Newport during their "invincible" season of 1891–92, when they did not lose a match, and scored a record 37 tries in Newport's 24-game 1893–94 season, a club record that still stands. Gould frequently travelled due to his job as a public contractor, and consequently turned out for a number of other sides during his career, including the clubs Richmond and London Welsh, and the county side Middlesex.
Gould was first selected for Wales in 1885 when he played at fullback against England. He was awarded the captaincy in 1889, by which time he was playing at centre, and led Wales to their first Home Nations Championship and Triple Crown titles in 1893; that tournament's match against England established Gould as a great player and captain. By the time Gould retired he was the most capped Welsh centre, a record he held until 1980, with 25 caps in the position. He ended his international career against England on 9 January 1897. The game, played in front of 17,000 supporters at Rodney Parade, was Gould's 18th as Wales captain – a record eventually broken by Ieuan Evans in 1994.
Towards the end of his career, Gould was at the centre of a controversy known as the "Gould affair" that saw Wales withdraw from international rugby for a year. The controversy centred on the support of the Welsh Football Union (WFU) for a testimonial for Gould on his retirement. The English Rugby Football Union and International Rugby Football Board (IRFB) argued that the testimonial constituted professionalism – which they claimed breached the sport's by-laws. The WFU withdrew from the IRFB in protest, rejoining a year later under the IRFB-imposed condition that Gould would not represent Wales again. He worked as a brewery representative after retiring from rugby, and died of an internal haemorrhage in 1919 at the age of 54.
## Family and early years
Arthur Joseph Gould was born into a sporting family in Newport, Wales, on 10 October 1864 to Joseph and Elizabeth. His father, from Oxford, England, moved to Newport to find work, setting up his own brass foundry business. Joseph was also an ardent sportsman, playing for the local cricket team.
Gould's five brothers were all notable rugby players and athletes. His brother Bob was a forward who played 136 times for Newport Rugby Football Club, whom he captained in the 1886–87 season. Bob was also capped 11 times for Wales between 1882 and 1887, and captained his country once, versus Scotland in 1887. A younger brother, Bert, was a centre who played three times for Wales – he appeared with Gould in the Welsh team that won the Triple Crown for the first time in 1893. His other brothers – Harry, Gus and Wyatt – all played rugby for Newport. Wyatt captained Newport in 1905–06, and Harry played for them in their inaugural season of 1875–76. For the first 29 seasons of its existence, Newport RFC always had at least one of the Gould brothers in the team. Wyatt played for the club until 1907; he also ran the 400 m hurdles for Great Britain in the 1908 Summer Olympics.
The young Gould often climbed trees, and thus acquired the childhood nickname "Monkey", which was soon contracted by most to "Monk". Like his brother Wyatt, he was a keen athlete and made £1,000 during his years as a rugby player by entering track and field meets. A county champion sprinter and hurdler, Gould finished third in the Amateur Athletic Association 120-yard hurdles in 1887 and 1893.
## Rugby career
### Club and county history
At the age of 14 Gould captained the Newport Junior team, and later played a few games for the Third XV. Gould was drafted into the First XV – the senior team – as a fullback at the age of 18. On 18 November 1882 Newport had a home fixture against Weston-super-Mare at Rodney Parade. The Newport groundsman, John Butcher, had been sent by the club to collect the regular fullback who had not appeared for the game. Gould, who was returning from a youth match, saw Butcher outside the missing fullback's home and approached the groundsman to discover that the player was at a funeral. Butcher offered Gould the position instead, and then the groundsman successfully persuaded the club captain to play him. Gould ran in two of his team's three tries after disregarding the instructions of his captain, Charlie Newman, who kept shouting for Gould to "Kick, kick!" After this, he was not dropped by Newport until his retirement in 1898.
As rugby was then an exclusively amateur sport, Gould and his brother Bob travelled Britain working as public works contractors. During this time he entered open athletic meets and played for various English rugby teams including the Southampton Trojans, and from 1887 was a regular member of the London side Richmond. In 1885 Gould was invited to play for the newly formed Welsh exiles team London Welsh. London Scottish F.C. had been founded for Scottish players working or studying in the city, but until this time a London club for Welsh players had not existed. The side's first game, a trial match, was played on 21 October 1885 at Putney, and three days later the first team played London Scottish at the Saracens' Palmerston Road ground in Walthamstow. Gould played at half-back, and was joined in the team by Martyn Jordan, Thomas Judson, Rowley Thomas, Charles Taylor and T. Williams – all past or future Welsh internationals. During the 1885–86 season London Welsh were invited to form a combined "exiles" team with London Scottish, to face a London XV in a charity match at The Oval. Gould was one of six Welsh players selected to play in front of a crowd of 8,000 that included the Prince of Wales.
In the 1885–86 season he was moved up to play as a threequarter for Newport. As he was frequently travelling and playing in England between 1885 and 1890, Gould was not a regular member of the team. After playing just a handful games during the three seasons preceding it, in the 1889–90 season he managed 15 games for the club – scoring ten tries and five dropped goals.
In June 1890 Gould left Britain to complete a works contract in the West Indies, but returned to Newport in time for the 1891–92 season. Newport were unbeaten throughout that campaign, which was later dubbed their "invincible" season. Gould captained Newport between 1893–94, when the team lost only three games, and in the 1894–95 season, in which the club lost only to Llanelli. During his first period as captain, 1893–94, Gould scored 37 tries in 24 games, a club record that still stands as of 2013. Although records before 1886 are incomplete, Newport RFC acknowledge Gould's scoring record at the club between the 1882–83 and 1898–99 seasons as 159 tries, 66 conversions, 61 dropped goals and a single penalty, over 231 appearances.
Gould also turned out for the Middlesex county side, and was a mainstay during their "invincible" season of 1887–88. He also played for them against the New Zealand Native team in 1888. The match, hosted by the Earl of Sheffield, was an invitation only event. The Middlesex side won 9–0, and scored three tries in the match, the second one resulting from a smart pass by Gould. In addition to Gould, the Middlesex backline of the time regularly fielded a number of English and Scottish internationals – this earned the side the sarcastic nickname "the Imperial team".
### International career
#### 1885–89
Gould was first capped for Wales against England in the opening game of the 1885 Home Nations Championship. He joined his brother Bob in the side, and played at fullback, his preferred position at the time. Played under the captaincy of Newport teammate Charlie Newman, this was Wales' eighth-ever international and fourth encounter with England. The Welsh lost by a goal and a try to a goal and four tries. Wing Martyn Jordan of London Welsh scored both Welsh tries, with one successfully converted into a goal. Some accounts award the conversion to Charles Taylor, though it is now generally credited to Gould. Gould was selected for the second game of the tournament, an away draw to Scotland, in which both teams played a pair of brothers; George and Richard Maitland for Scotland, and Arthur and Bob Gould for Wales.
By 1886 the four threequarter system had spread throughout Wales. First instituted by Cardiff RFC in 1884, the system was designed to allow Cardiff centres Frank Hancock and Tom Williams to play at the same time, and involved dropping the ninth forward to include a second centre. Newport were reluctant to adopt this style of play, mainly due to Gould's excellent kicking and covering abilities, which allowed the club to continue with the advantage of the extra forward.
For the 1885–86 season Gould switched from fullback at Newport to the centre position; this tactic was adopted by Wales and Gould replaced Cardiff's Hancock at centre for their first match of the 1886 Home Nations Championship against England. The match resulted in a Welsh loss. In Wales' next game, against Scotland, Wales became the first country to trial the four threequarter system. They did this by bringing back Hancock as captain and having him play at centre alongside Gould. The experiment was a tactical disaster – the eight Welsh forwards struggled against the nine Scottish forwards. Hancock duly regrouped the team at half-time and readopted the standard formation, bringing Harry Bowen from fullback into the pack, and pushing Gould from centre into Bowen's vacant position. Wales lost by two goals to nil, the system was deemed a failure and Hancock never represented Wales again. The whole affair had a negative effect on Gould, who initially disliked the strategy, stating that he was "prejudiced against the four three-quarters." Gould even went as far as persuading the Welsh selectors to revert to the old formation. The next time Wales trialled the system was in the 1888 encounter with the touring New Zealand Natives, a match in which Gould was unavailable to play.
In the next season, Wales completed their first full Home Nations Championship; Gould played as the lone centre in all three games. It was a fairly successful Championship for the Welsh, with a draw, a win and a loss, leaving them second in the table. Of note during the series was Bob Gould's captaincy in the second match, against Scotland, and Gould's first ever international dropped goal – which gave Wales a win over Ireland and made up for him missing a dropped goal by just a yard in their draw against England. Due to work commitments, Gould only played one of the two Wales games of the 1888 Home Nations Championship, in the country's first victory over Scotland, thanks to a single try from Thomas Pryce-Jenkins. In the second game, played away to Ireland, George Bowen was given the centre position in the last match Wales would play with a three threequarter system. Gould then missed the first Welsh international against an overseas touring side, when the New Zealand Natives were beaten at St. Helen's in Swansea, and was still absent two months later for the opening game of the 1889 Championship. Gould returned in time for the clash with Ireland where he was given the captaincy and played alongside Llanelli centre Tom Morgan. Gould lost his first match as captain, losing by two tries to nil at home – this was the first of 18 caps he earned leading his country.
#### 1890–93
Gould appeared in Wales' three matches of the 1890 Home Nations Championship where he partnered Dickie Garrett, a coal tipper who played for Penarth, at centre. Gould lost the team captaincy for the first match to Frank Hill, a game which Wales lost to Scotland 5–1, though Gould did score his first international try. The game is also notable for featuring the first appearance of Billy Bancroft, the Swansea all-round sportsman who would take over the captaincy from Gould on his retirement. Bancroft was fullback in Gould's next 18 international games. Gould regained the captaincy for the next game, an encounter with England at Crown Flatt in Dewsbury, and from that point held the captaincy whenever he represented Wales. The encounter was an historic day for Wales, with the country's first win over England, a single try from Buller Stadden giving Wales the victory. The campaign ended in a disappointing away draw with Ireland, which saw the introduction of Tom Graham, a Newport forward who would become Gould's club captain during the 1891–92 "invincible" season.
Gould missed the entire 1891 campaign as he and his brother Bob had travelled to the West Indies to conduct civil engineering work. Gould regained his international place and the captaincy on his return for the 1892 Home Nations Championship. The tournament was a failure for Wales; the team lost all three of their matches. There was little consistency for Gould at centre, with three different centre-pairings in each of the matches; Garrett against England, Conway Rees at home to Scotland and in the Irish encounter, Gould's younger brother Bert. The 1892 Championship was soured by the aftermath of the Wales–Scotland encounter, which was played in Swansea at St. Helen's. After Wales lost the game 7–2, members of the crowd, angered by Jack Hodgson's refereeing of the game, attacked him. The assailants by-passed the police and the referee had to be rescued by members of the Welsh team. In the struggle, Gould was struck on the chin, and it was reported that Hodgson only reached the Mackworth Hotel because Gould accompanied him on the coach.
The Welsh performance during the 1893 Home Nations Championship was in stark contrast to the previous year. Under the captaincy of Gould, Wales not only won the Championship for the first time, but also the Triple Crown. The first match of the campaign was against England, and played at the Cardiff Arms Park. The pitch had been kept from freezing over the night before by 500 braziers dispersed across the playing field. This led to a slippery ground, with play further hampered by a strong wind.
The English played the first half with the wind behind them and their nine-man scrum dominated the smaller Welsh pack. At half time Wales were 7–0 down following tries from Frederick Lohden and Howard Marshall and a conversion from England captain Andrew Stoddart. The second half started poorly for Wales when Marshall scored a second try following excellent English forward pressure. The game turned not long after: the English forwards could not maintain the pace they had set in the first half of the game, and began to slow. Then Welsh forward Charles Nicholl broke through a line-out with the ball, transferred it to Hannan, who passed to Gould at the halfway line. Gould evaded both Alderson and Lockwood before outpacing Edwin Field to score beneath the posts. Bancroft converted. A near identical move resulted in Conway Rees then releasing Cardiff wing Norman Biggs who scored with a run from the half-way line, though this time the conversion missed.
The Welsh backs repeatedly exposed the three threequarter system used by the English, as once the Welsh backs broke through the pack there was little defensive-cover to prevent run away scores. With the score at 9–7 to England, Marshall extended the lead with his third try of the match. This gave England an 11–7 lead with only ten minutes remaining. The game swung again when Percy Phillips received ball quickly before passing to Gould. Gould broke through the English defence and scored, though again Bancroft missed the conversion. With further Welsh pressure, a penalty was awarded to Wales on the English 25-yard line, but at a wide angle. Accounts differ as to what happened; some say that Gould tried to place the ball for Bancroft, but failed on the frozen ground, another states that Bancroft defied his captain to take the penalty as a drop kick, while other accounts mention Bancroft and Gould arguing on the pitch before Bancroft's attempt. Regardless, Bancroft kicked the penalty, the first penalty to be scored in an international match. It was the final score of the game and Wales were victorious, 12–11.
At the final whistle the pitch was invaded by Welsh fans and Gould was carried shoulder-high back to the Angel Hotel, cheered all the way. It was a defining moment for the Welsh style of play. England adopted the four threequarter system the following year.
Gould continued to captain the Wales team through victory over Scotland, with tries coming from Bert Gould, Biggs and William McCutcheon; all the result of precision handling from the backs. This left the final encounter with Ireland, played at Stradey Park in Llanelli, as the deciding match for a Welsh Triple Crown. Despite an unconvincing Welsh display, an enthusiastic crowd of 20,000 watched their country win the game and with it the title, decided by a single try from Bert Gould.
#### 1894–97
The 1894 Championship began with a loss for the defending champions against England, during a game in which Welsh in-fighting affected the result. Before the game, Gould instructed his forwards to heel the ball from the scrums swiftly, so it would get to the backs quickly and allow them to run at the English. Frank Hill decided that this was the wrong option and put all his might into wheeling the scrums instead, which worked against the efforts of Jim Hannan, who was trying to follow his captain's wishes. In the next match Gould was partnered by Dai Fitzgerald in a win over Scotland, but was unavailable for the encounter with Ireland and was replaced by Jack Elliott from Cardiff RFC.
By 1895 the only backs remaining from the 1893 Championship-winning team were Bancroft and Gould. Gould was now partnered with Owen Badger, who kept his place for the whole campaign. As the other teams adopted the Welsh style of play, Wales lost their advantage; the livelier English forwards outplayed their Welsh counterparts to give England victory in the opening game of the 1895 Championship. This was followed by a close loss to Scotland at Raeburn Place and then a narrow win over Ireland at the Cardiff Arms Park.
1896 was Gould's last full international tournament. The Championship started badly for Wales with a heavy defeat by England, during which Wales were reduced to 14 men after Badger broke his collar-bone in the first 15 minutes. In the second game Wales beat Scotland 6–0, with a try each for Gould and Cliff Bowen. The final game of the Championship was an away loss to Ireland, in which Gould scored his last international points with a dropped goal. At the end of 1896 Gould decided to retire from rugby.
In 1897, Gould was enticed out of retirement for one last Championship. By now Gould was a household name throughout Britain, as much due to his personality and good looks as his brilliant centre play; a testimonial fund had been started with contributions being made by the public. This caused a stir among the other Home Unions, who viewed this as an effort to pay Gould for playing, which would constitute professionalism. As the arguments continued, Gould played his final international game, a solid 11–0 win over England in early January. Wales played no further matches that season after the events behind Gould's testimonial fund caused Wales to leave the International Rugby Football Board (IRFB), in a situation now referred to as the "Gould affair".
#### Matches played
## Gould affair
By 1896 Gould had played more first class matches, scored more tries and dropped more goals than any other player on record. This led to South Wales Argus journalist W. J. Townsend Collins, to write in the paper: "... as Arthur Gould is as pre-eminent in football as W. G. Grace is in cricket, the footballing enthusiasts of Wales might recognise his services to the game ... by some national testimonial."
A Welsh shipbroker, W. J. Orders, organised a collection fund on the floor of the Cardiff Coal Exchange and floated a public testimonial of one shilling. The national response was considerable and within weeks the total was into hundreds of pounds. This drew the Welsh Football Union (WFU) into a confrontation with the IRFB, as rule 2 on professionalism stated that no player was allowed to receive money from his club, or any member of his club, for services rendered to football. The fund could have been seen as a professional fee to Gould, henceforth making him ineligible to play for his country. The WFU argued that the money raised was not given by the club, but rather an outpouring of thanks from the Welsh public to a national hero.
By April 1896 the Welsh Football Union had sanctioned a subscription of 1,000 shillings to be contributed to the Gould testimonial. The Rugby Football Union (RFU) complained and the IRFB reacted by informing the WFU that only a plate up to the value of a hundred pounds sterling could be given to Gould, and that the remaining funds should be donated to charity; otherwise Wales would lose their international fixtures. The WFU stood down and withdrew their subscription. The reaction in Wales was one of anger, with the people feeling that the WFU had bowed to English pressure, and had been bullied into a decision against the people's wishes.
In a move that was described as an act of hurt pride by social historian David Smith, but also as a manoeuvre to appease the Welsh supporters, in February 1897 the WFU wrote to the IRFB and withdrew their membership. The WFU claimed that they alone had authority over the matter because the IRFB did not have any rules regarding amateurism. The WFU then reinstated their subscription to Gould, and on Easter Monday 1897 a banquet was arranged at Drill Hall in Newport in Gould's honour. Many civic and sporting worthies were in attendance to witness the WFU president Sir John Llewellyn present Gould with the title deeds of a gift house. The 250 guests, including David A. Thomas, were joined by a reed and string orchestra, the band of the Fourth Battalion of the South Wales Borderers, and galleries packed by members of the public.
Wales did not field an international team until the IRFB, supported by the RFU, recommended that the WFU be readmitted into the organisation in February 1898. The WFU agreed that they would in future abide by all IRFB by-laws, and that Gould not be allowed to play in any future internationals. Gould accepted the ruling but returned to rugby as a referee and Welsh international selector. The compromise prevented a long term split in the sport, and by 1901 the IRFB added laws to the game banning professionalism to clarify their authority on the issue.
## Later life and legacy
After retiring from rugby, Gould became a brewery representative around Newport. He was still a very popular figure and was followed during his work by fans; his image was still worth money, appearing on merchandise such as cigarette cards and matchboxes.
Gould died in 1919, at the age of 54. Falling ill at work on 2 January, he was rushed home where he died later that day of an internal haemorrhage. His funeral was reported as the biggest ever seen in Wales up to that time; it was surpassed three decades later by that of the former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Gould was buried at St Woolos Cemetery, Newport. In reporting his death, The Times stated:
> To him more than anyone else is due the rise of Welsh football, and so football as we know it now. He did more than any one else to transform a game from one in which brute force and individual skill were the chief characteristics to one in which scientific combination became the main feature, without the sacrifice of individualism.
In 1923 a memorial fund was raised in Gould's name, the donations of which were given to the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport. The hospital recognised the gift with the Arthur Gould Memorial Bed, inscribed: "To the memory of Arthur Gould – Greatest of Rugby Football Players". The bed was lost, however, when a portion of the hospital was demolished. Donations for the memorial, which totalled £1,525, were received from all over the world, and several matches were staged to raise funds, including a fixture between Newport and Cardiff.
Gould has been described as the first superstar of his sport by rugby historian Terry Godwin while David Smith in the Official History of the Welsh Rugby Union described him as the first player to surpass national recognition, becoming in both meanings of the word "an international". The Welsh Academy's Encyclopedia of Wales, published over 90 years after his death, records Gould as "Welsh rugby's first superstar", while a 1919 obituary described him as "the most accomplished player of his generation". He set several long-standing records for his country, including captaining Wales 18 times, a number eventually surpassed by Ieuan Evans in 1994. Gould played 25 matches at centre for Wales, a record that stood until beaten by Steve Fenwick in 1980. He was also the most capped Welsh player, with 27, at the time of his retirement.
Gould was inducted into the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame in June 2007; members of Gould's family were in attendance including his granddaughter Mary Hales. When Newport RFC set up their own hall of fame in 2012 the first person inaugurated was Gould. Gould was inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame in November 2016.
|
6,395,779 |
Dwarf planet
| 1,172,968,117 |
Small planetary-mass object
|
[
"1990s neologisms",
"Concepts in astronomy",
"Dwarf planets",
"Minor planets",
"Planemos",
"Types of planet"
] |
A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit of the Sun, smaller than any of the eight classical planets. The prototypical dwarf planet is Pluto. The interest of dwarf planets to planetary geologists is that they may be geologically active bodies, an expectation that was borne out in 2015 by the Dawn mission to and the New Horizons mission to Pluto.
Astronomers are in general agreement that at least the nine largest candidates are dwarf planets: , , , , , , , , and . Of these nine plus the tenth-largest candidate , two have been visited by spacecraft (Pluto and Ceres) and seven others have at least one known moon (Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong, Quaoar, Orcus, and Salacia), which allows their masses and thus an estimate of their densities to be determined. Mass and density in turn can be fit into geophysical models in an attempt to determine the nature of these worlds. Only one, Sedna, has neither been visited nor has any known moons, making an accurate estimate of mass difficult. Some astronomers include many smaller bodies as well, but there is no consensus that these are likely to be dwarf planets.
The term dwarf planet was coined by planetary scientist Alan Stern as part of a three-way categorization of planetary-mass objects in the Solar System: classical planets, dwarf planets, and satellite planets. Dwarf planets were thus conceived of as a category of planet. In 2006, however, the concept was adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as a category of sub–planetary objects, part of a three-way recategorization of bodies orbiting the Sun: planets, dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies. Thus Stern and other planetary geologists consider dwarf planets and large satellites to be planets, but since 2006, the IAU and perhaps the majority of astronomers have excluded them from the roster of planets.
## History of the concept
Starting in 1801, astronomers discovered Ceres and other bodies between Mars and Jupiter that for decades were considered to be planets. Between then and around 1851, when the number of planets had reached 23, astronomers started using the word asteroid (from Greek, meaning 'star-like' or 'star-shaped') for the smaller bodies and began to distinguish them as minor planets rather than major planets.
With the discovery of Pluto in 1930, most astronomers considered the Solar System to have nine major planets, along with thousands of significantly smaller bodies (asteroids and comets). For almost 50 years, Pluto was thought to be larger than Mercury, but with the discovery in 1978 of Pluto's moon Charon, it became possible to measure Pluto's mass accurately and to determine that it was much smaller than initial estimates. It was roughly one-twentieth the mass of Mercury, which made Pluto by far the smallest planet. Although it was still more than ten times as massive as the largest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres, it had only one-fifth the mass of Earth's Moon. Furthermore, having some unusual characteristics, such as large orbital eccentricity and a high orbital inclination, it became evident that it was a different kind of body from any of the other planets.
In the 1990s, astronomers began to find objects in the same region of space as Pluto (now known as the Kuiper belt), and some even farther away. Many of these shared several of Pluto's key orbital characteristics, and Pluto started being seen as the largest member of a new class of objects, the plutinos. It became clear that either the larger of these bodies would also have to be classified as planets, or Pluto would have to be reclassified, much as Ceres had been reclassified after the discovery of additional asteroids. This led some astronomers to stop referring to Pluto as a planet. Several terms, including subplanet and planetoid, started to be used for the bodies now known as dwarf planets. Astronomers were also confident that more objects as large as Pluto would be discovered, and the number of planets would start growing quickly if Pluto were to remain classified as a planet.
Eris (then known as ) was discovered in January 2005; it was thought to be slightly larger than Pluto, and some reports informally referred to it as the tenth planet. As a consequence, the issue became a matter of intense debate during the IAU General Assembly in August 2006. The IAU's initial draft proposal included Charon, Eris, and Ceres in the list of planets. After many astronomers objected to this proposal, an alternative was drawn up by the Uruguayan astronomers Julio Ángel Fernández and Gonzalo Tancredi: They proposed an intermediate category for objects large enough to be round but that had not cleared their orbits of planetesimals. Beside dropping Charon from the list, the new proposal also removed Pluto, Ceres, and Eris, because they have not cleared their orbits.
Although concerns were raised about the classification of planets orbiting other stars, the issue was not resolved; it was proposed instead to decide this only when dwarf-planet-size objects start to be observed.
In the immediate aftermath of the IAU definition of dwarf planet, some scientists expressed their disagreement with the IAU resolution. Campaigns included car bumper stickers and T-shirts. Mike Brown (the discoverer of Eris) agrees with the reduction of the number of planets to eight.
NASA announced in 2006 that it would use the new guidelines established by the IAU. Alan Stern, the director of NASA's mission to Pluto, rejects the current IAU definition of planet, both in terms of defining dwarf planets as something other than a type of planet, and in using orbital characteristics (rather than intrinsic characteristics) of objects to define them as dwarf planets. Thus, in 2011, he still referred to Pluto as a planet, and accepted other likely dwarf planets such as Ceres and Eris, as well as the larger moons, as additional planets. Several years before the IAU definition, he used orbital characteristics to separate "überplanets" (the dominant eight) from "unterplanets" (the dwarf planets), considering both types "planets".
## Name
Names for large subplanetary bodies include dwarf planet, planetoid (more general term), meso-planet (narrowly used for sizes between Mercury and Ceres), quasi-planet and (in the transneptunian region) plutoid. Dwarf planet, however, was originally coined as a term for the smallest planets, not the largest sub-planets, and is still used that way by many planetary astronomers.
Alan Stern coined the term dwarf planet, analogous to the term dwarf star, as part of a three-fold classification of planets, and he and many of his colleagues continue to classify dwarf planets as a class of planets. The IAU decided that dwarf planets are not to be considered planets, but kept Stern's term for them. Other terms for the IAU definition of the largest subplanetary bodies that do not have such conflicting connotations or usage include quasi-planet and the older term planetoid ("having the form of a planet"). Michael E. Brown stated that planetoid is "a perfectly good word" that has been used for these bodies for years, and that the use of the term dwarf planet for a non-planet is "dumb", but that it was motivated by an attempt by the IAU division III plenary session to reinstate Pluto as a planet in a second resolution. Indeed, the draft of Resolution 5A had called these median bodies planetoids, but the plenary session voted unanimously to change the name to dwarf planet. The second resolution, 5B, defined dwarf planets as a subtype of planet, as Stern had originally intended, distinguished from the other eight that were to be called "classical planets". Under this arrangement, the twelve planets of the rejected proposal were to be preserved in a distinction between eight classical planets and four dwarf planets. Resolution 5B was defeated in the same session that 5A was passed. Because of the semantic inconsistency of a dwarf planet not being a planet due to the failure of Resolution 5B, alternative terms such as nanoplanet and subplanet were discussed, but there was no consensus among the CSBN to change it.
In most languages equivalent terms have been created by translating dwarf planet more-or-less literally: French planète naine, Spanish planeta enano, German Zwergplanet, Russian karlikovaya planeta (карликовая планета), Arabic kaukab qazm (كوكب قزم), Chinese ǎixíngxīng (矮行星), Korean waesohangseong (왜소행성 / 矮小行星) or waehangseong (왜행성 / 矮行星), but in Japanese they are called junwakusei (準惑星), meaning "quasi-planets" or "peneplanets" (pene- meaning "almost").
IAU Resolution 6a of 2006 recognizes Pluto as "the prototype of a new category of trans-Neptunian objects". The name and precise nature of this category were not specified but left for the IAU to establish at a later date; in the debate leading up to the resolution, the members of the category were variously referred to as plutons and plutonian objects but neither name was carried forward, perhaps due to objections from geologists that this would create confusion with their pluton.
On June 11, 2008, the IAU Executive Committee announced a new term, plutoid, and a definition: all trans-Neptunian dwarf planets are plutoids. Other departments of the IAU have rejected the term:
> ...in part because of an email miscommunication, the WG-PSN [Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature] was not involved in choosing the word plutoid. ... In fact, a vote taken by the WG-PSN subsequent to the Executive Committee meeting has rejected the use of that specific term..."
The category of 'plutoid' captured an earlier distinction between the 'terrestrial dwarf' Ceres and the 'ice dwarfs' of the outer Solar system, part of a conception of a threefold division of the Solar System into inner terrestrial planets, central gas giants and outer ice dwarfs, of which Pluto was the principal member. 'Ice dwarf' also saw some use as an umbrella term for all trans-Neptunian minor planets, or for the ice asteroids of the outer Solar System; one attempted definition was that an ice dwarf "is larger than the nucleus of a normal comet and icier than a typical asteroid."
Since the Dawn mission, it has been recognized that Ceres is an icy body more similar to the icy moons of the outer planets and to TNOs such as Pluto than it is to the terrestrial planets, blurring the distinction, and Ceres has since been called an ice dwarf as well.
## Criteria
The category dwarf planet arose from a conflict between dynamical and geophysical ideas of what a useful conception of a planet would be. In terms of the dynamics of the Solar System, the major distinction is between bodies that gravitationally dominate their neighbourhood (Mercury through Neptune) and those that do not (such as the asteroids and Kuiper belt objects). A celestial body may have a dynamic (planetary) geology at approximately the mass required for its mantle to become plastic under its own weight, which results in the body acquiring a round shape. Because this requires a much lower mass than gravitationally dominating the region of space near their orbit, there are a population of objects that are massive enough to have a world-like appearance and planetary geology, but not massive enough to clear their neighborhood. Examples are Ceres in the asteroid belt and Pluto in the Kuiper belt.
Dynamicists usually prefer using gravitational dominance as the threshold for planethood, because from their perspective smaller bodies are better grouped with their neighbours, e.g. Ceres as simply a large asteroid and Pluto as a large Kuiper belt object. Geoscientists usually prefer roundness as the threshold, because from their perspective the internally driven geology of a body like Ceres makes it more similar to a classical planet like Mars, than to a small asteroid that lacks internally driven geology. This necessitated the creation of the category of dwarf planets to describe this intermediate class.
### Orbital dominance
Stern & Levison (2000) introduced a parameter Λ (upper case lambda), expressing the likelihood of an encounter resulting in a given deflection of orbit. The value of this parameter in Stern's model is proportional to the square of the mass and inversely proportional to the period. This value can be used to estimate the capacity of a body to clear the neighbourhood of its orbit, where Λ \> 1 will eventually clear it. A gap of five orders of magnitude in Λ was found between the smallest terrestrial planets and the largest asteroids and Kuiper belt objects.
Using this parameter, Soter and other astronomers argued for a distinction between planets and dwarf planets based on the inability of the latter to "clear the neighbourhood around their orbits": planets are able to remove smaller bodies near their orbits by collision, capture, or gravitational disturbance (or establish orbital resonances that prevent collisions), whereas dwarf planets lack the mass to do so. Soter went on to propose a parameter he called the planetary discriminant, designated with the symbol μ (mu), that represents an experimental measure of the actual degree of cleanliness of the orbital zone (where μ is calculated by dividing the mass of the candidate body by the total mass of the other objects that share its orbital zone), where μ \> 100 is deemed to be cleared.
Jean-Luc Margot refined Stern and Levison's concept to produce a similar parameter Π (upper case Pi). It is based on theory, avoiding the empirical data used by Λ . Π \> 1 indicates a planet, and there is again a gap of several orders of magnitude between planets and dwarf planets.
There are several other schemes that try to differentiate between planets and dwarf planets, but the 2006 definition uses this concept.
### Hydrostatic equilibrium
Enough internal pressure, caused by the body's gravitation, will turn a body plastic, and enough plasticity will allow high elevations to sink and hollows to fill in, a process known as gravitational relaxation. Bodies smaller than a few kilometers are dominated by non-gravitational forces and tend to have an irregular shape and may be rubble piles. Larger objects, where gravity is significant but not dominant, are potato-shaped; the more massive the body, the higher its internal pressure, the more solid it is and the more rounded its shape, until the pressure is enough to overcome its compressive strength and it achieves hydrostatic equilibrium. Then, a body is as round as it is possible to be, given its rotation and tidal effects, and is an ellipsoid in shape. This is the defining limit of a dwarf planet.
If an object is in hydrostatic equilibrium, a global layer of liquid on its surface would form a surface of the same shape as the body, apart from small-scale surface features such as craters and fissures. The body will have a spherical shape if it does not rotate and an ellipsoidal one if it does. The faster it rotates, the more oblate or even scalene it becomes. If such a rotating body were heated until it melts, its shape would not change. The extreme example of a body that may be scalene due to rapid rotation is , which is twice as long on its major axis as it is at the poles. If the body has a massive nearby companion, then tidal forces gradually slow its rotation until it is tidally locked; that is, it always presents the same face to its companion. Tidally locked bodies are also scalene, though sometimes only slightly so. Earth's Moon is tidally locked, as are all the rounded satellites of the gas giants. Pluto and Charon are tidally locked to each other, as are Eris and Dysnomia, and probably also Orcus and Vanth.
There are no specific size or mass limits of dwarf planets, as those are not defining features. There is no clear upper limit: an object very far out the Solar system that is more massive than Mercury might not have had time to clear its neighbourhood; such a body would fit the definition of dwarf planet rather than planet. Indeed, Mike Brown set out to find such an object. The lower limit is determined by the requirements of achieving and retaining hydrostatic equilibrium, but the size or mass at which an object attains and retains equilibrium and depends on its composition and thermal history, not simply its mass. An IAU 2006 press release question-and-answer section estimated that objects with mass above 0.5×10<sup>21</sup> kg and radius greater than 400 km would "normally" be in hydrostatic equilibrium (the shape ... would normally be determined by self-gravity), but that all borderline cases would need to be determined by observation. This is close to what as of 2019 is believed to be roughly the limit for objects beyond Neptune that are fully compact, solid bodies, with ( r = 423±11 km , m = (0.492±0.007)×10<sup>21</sup> kg ) and possibly ( r = 400±12 km , m unknown) being borderline cases both for the 2006 Q&A expectations and in more recent evaluations, and with being just above the expected limit. No other body with a measured mass is close to the expected mass limit, though several without a measured mass approach the expected size limit.
## Population of dwarf planets
There is no clear definition of what constitutes a dwarf planet, and whether to classify an object as one is up to individual astronomers. Thus, the number of dwarf planets in the Solar System is unknown.
The three objects under consideration during the debates leading up to the 2006 IAU acceptance of the category of dwarf planet – Ceres, Pluto and Eris – are generally accepted as dwarf planets, including by those astronomers who continue to classify dwarf planets as planets. Only one of them – Pluto – has been observed in enough detail to verify that its current shape fits what would be expected from hydrostatic equilibrium. Ceres is close to equilibrium, but some gravitational anomalies remain unexplained. Eris is generally assumed to be a dwarf planet because it is more massive than Pluto.
In order of discovery, these three bodies are:
1. – discovered January 1, 1801 and announced January 24, 45 years before Neptune. Considered a planet for half a century before reclassification as an asteroid. Considered a dwarf planet by the IAU since the adoption of Resolution 5A on August 24, 2006. Confirmation is pending.
2. – discovered February 18, 1930 and announced March 13. Considered a planet for 76 years. Explicitly reclassified as a dwarf planet by the IAU with Resolution 6A on August 24, 2006. Five known moons.
3. () – discovered January 5, 2005 and announced July 29. Called the "tenth planet" in media reports. Considered a dwarf planet by the IAU since the adoption of Resolution 5A on August 24, 2006, and named by the IAU dwarf-planet naming committee on September 13 of that year. One known moon.
The IAU only established guidelines for which committee would oversee the naming of likely dwarf planets: any unnamed trans-Neptunian object with an absolute magnitude brighter than +1 (and hence a minimum diameter of 838 km at the maximum geometric albedo of 1) was to be named by a joint committee consisting of the Minor Planet Center and the planetary working group of the IAU. At the time (and still as of 2021), the only bodies to meet this threshold were and . These bodies are generally assumed to be dwarf planets, although they have not yet been demonstrated to be in hydrostatic equilibrium, and there is some disagreement for Haumea:
These five bodies – the three under consideration in 2006 (Pluto, Ceres and Eris) plus the two named in 2008 (Haumea and Makemake) – are commonly presented as the dwarf planets of the Solar System, though the limiting factor (albedo) is not what defines an object as a dwarf planet.
The astronomical community commonly refers to other larger TNOs as dwarf planets as well. At least four additional bodies meet the preliminary criteria of Brown, of Tancredi et al., and of Grundy et al. for identifying dwarf planets, and are generally called dwarf planets by astronomers as well:
For instance, JPL/NASA called Gonggong a dwarf planet after observations in 2016, and Simon Porter of the Southwest Research Institute spoke of "the big eight [TNO] dwarf planets" in 2018, referring to Pluto, Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong, , and .
More bodies have been proposed, such as and by Brown, and by Tancredi et al., and by Sheppard et al. Most of the larger bodies have moons, which enables a determination of their mass and thus their density, which inform estimates of whether they could be dwarf planets. The largest TNOs that are not known to have moons are Sedna, , and Ixion. In particular, Salacia has a known mass and diameter putting it as a borderline case by the IAU's 2006 Q&A.
At the time Makemake and Haumea were named, it was thought that trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) with icy cores would require a diameter of only about 400 km (250 mi), or 3% the size of Earth – the size of the moons Mimas, the smallest moon that is round, and Proteus, the largest that is not – to relax into gravitational equilibrium. Researchers thought that the number of such bodies could prove to be around 200 in the Kuiper belt, with thousands more beyond. This was one of the reasons (keeping the roster of 'planets' to a reasonable number) that Pluto was reclassified in the first place. Research since then has cast doubt on the idea that bodies that small could have achieved or maintained equilibrium under the typical conditions of the Kuiper belt and beyond.
Individual astronomers have recognized a number of objects as dwarf planets or as likely to prove to be dwarf planets. In 2008, Tancredi et al. advised the IAU to officially accept Orcus, Sedna and Quaoar as dwarf planets (Gonggong was not yet known), though the IAU did not address the issue then and has not since. Tancredi also considered the five TNOs , , , , and to most likely be dwarf planets as well. Since 2011, Brown has maintained a list of hundreds of candidate objects, ranging from "nearly certain" to "possible" dwarf planets, based solely on estimated size. As of 13 September 2019, Brown's list identifies ten trans-Neptunian objects with diameters then thought to be greater than 900 km (the four named by the IAU plus , , , , and ) as "near certain" to be dwarf planets, and another 16, with diameter greater than 600 km, as "highly likely". Notably, Gonggong may have a larger diameter (1230±50 km) than Pluto's round moon Charon (1212 km).
But in 2019 Grundy et al. proposed, based on their studies of Gǃkúnǁʼhòmdímà, that dark, low-density bodies smaller than about 900–1000 km in diameter, such as Salacia and , never fully collapsed into solid planetary bodies and retain internal porosity from their formation (in which case they could not be dwarf planets). They accept that brighter (albedo \> ≈0.2) or denser (\> ≈1.4 g/cc) Orcus and Quaoar probably were fully solid:
> Orcus and Charon probably melted and differentiated, considering their higher densities and spectra indicating surfaces made of relatively clean H<sub>2</sub>O ice. But the lower albedos and densities of Gǃkúnǁʼhòmdímà, 55637, Varda, and Salacia suggest that they never did differentiate, or if they did, it was only in their deep interiors, not a complete melting and overturning that involved the surface. Their surfaces could remain quite cold and uncompressed even as the interior becomes warm and collapses. The liberation of volatiles could further help transport heat out of their interiors, limiting the extent of their internal collapse. An object with a cold, relatively pristine surface and a partially collapsed interior should exhibit very distinctive surface geology, with abundant thrust faults indicative of the reduction in total surface area as the interior compresses and shrinks.
Salacia was later found to have a somewhat higher density, comparable within uncertainties to that of Orcus, though still with a very dark surface. Despite this determination, Grundy et al. call it "dwarf-planet sized", while calling Orcus a dwarf planet. Later studies on Varda suggest that its density may also be high, though a low density could not be excluded.
### Most likely dwarf planets
The trans-Neptunian objects in the following tables, except Salacia, are agreed by Brown, Tancredi et al. and Grundy et al. to be probable dwarf planets, or close to it. Salacia has been included as the largest TNO not generally agreed to be a dwarf planet and a borderline body by many criteria. Charon, a moon of Pluto that was proposed as a dwarf planet by the IAU in 2006, is included for comparison. Those objects that have absolute magnitude greater than +1, and so meet the threshold of the joint planet–minor planet naming committee of the IAU, are highlighted, as is Ceres, which the IAU has assumed is a dwarf planet since they first debated the concept.
The masses of given dwarf planets are listed for their systems (if they have satellites) with exceptions for Pluto and Orcus.
### Symbols
Ceres and Pluto received planetary symbols, as they were considered to be planets when they were discovered. By the time the others were discovered, planetary symbols had mostly fallen out of use among astronomers. Unicode includes symbols for the dwarf planets Quaoar , Sedna , Orcus , Haumea , Eris , Makemake , and Gonggong that are primarily used by astrologers: they were devised by Denis Moskowitz, a software engineer in Massachusetts. NASA has used his Haumea, Eris, and Makemake symbols, as well as the traditional astrological symbol for Pluto when referring to it as a dwarf planet. Symbols have been proposed for the next-largest named candidates, but do not have consistent usage among astrologers.
## Exploration
On March 6, 2015, the Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around Ceres, becoming the first spacecraft to visit a dwarf planet. On July 14, 2015, the New Horizons space probe flew by Pluto and its five moons.
Ceres displays such evidence of an active geology as salt deposits and cryovolcanos, while Pluto has water-ice mountains drifting in nitrogen-ice glaciers, as well as a significant atmosphere. Ceres evidently has brine percolating through its subsurface, while there is evidence that Pluto has an actual subsurface ocean.
Dawn had previously orbited the asteroid Vesta. Saturn's moon Phoebe has been imaged by Cassini and before that by Voyager 2, which also encountered Neptune's moon Triton. All three bodies show evidence of once being dwarf planets, and their exploration helps clarify the evolution of dwarf planets.
New Horizons has captured distant images of Triton, Quaoar, Haumea, Eris, and Makemake, as well as the smaller candidates Ixion, , and .
## Similar objects
A number of bodies physically resemble dwarf planets. These include former dwarf planets, which may still have equilibrium shape or evidence of active geology; planetary-mass moons, which meet the physical but not the orbital definition for dwarf planet; and Charon in the Pluto–Charon system, which is arguably a binary dwarf planet. The categories may overlap: Triton, for example, is both a former dwarf planet and a planetary-mass moon.
### Former dwarf planets
Vesta, the next-most-massive body in the asteroid belt after Ceres, was once in hydrostatic equilibrium and is roughly spherical, deviating mainly due to massive impacts that formed the Rheasilvia and Veneneia craters after it solidified. Its dimensions are not consistent with it currently being in hydrostatic equilibrium. Triton is more massive than Eris or Pluto, has an equilibrium shape, and is thought to be a captured dwarf planet (likely a member of a binary system), but no longer directly orbits the sun. Phoebe is a captured centaur that, like Vesta, is no longer in hydrostatic equilibrium, but is thought to have been so early in its history due to radiogenic heating.
Evidence from 2019 suggests that Theia, the former planet that collided with Earth in the giant-impact hypothesis, may have originated in the outer Solar System rather than the inner Solar System and that Earth's water originated on Theia, thus implying that Theia may have been a former dwarf planet from the Kuiper Belt.
### Planetary-mass moons
At least nineteen moons have equilibrium shape from having relaxed under self-gravity at some point, though some have since frozen solid and are no longer in equilibrium. Seven are more massive than either Eris or Pluto. These moons are not physically distinct from the dwarf planets, but do not fit the IAU definition because they do not directly orbit the Sun. (Indeed, Neptune's moon Triton is a captured dwarf planet, and Ceres formed in the same region of the Solar System as the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.) Alan Stern calls planetary-mass moons "satellite planets", one of three categories of planet, together with dwarf planets and classical planets. The term planemo ("planetary-mass object") also covers all three populations.
#### Charon
There has been some debate as to whether the Pluto–Charon system should be considered a double dwarf planet. In a draft resolution for the IAU definition of planet, both Pluto and Charon were considered planets in a binary system. The IAU currently says Charon is not considered a dwarf planet but rather a satellite of Pluto, though the idea that Charon might qualify as a dwarf planet may be considered at a later date. Nonetheless, it is no longer clear that Charon is in hydrostatic equilibrium. Also, the location of the barycenter depends not only on the relative masses of the bodies, but also on the distance between them; the barycenter of the Sun–Jupiter orbit, for example, lies outside the Sun, but they are not considered a binary object. Thus, a formal definition of what constitutes a binary (dwarf) planet must be established before Pluto and Charon are formally defined as binary dwarf planets.
## See also
- Centaur
- Lists of astronomical objects
- List of former planets
- List of gravitationally rounded objects of the Solar System
- List of planetary bodies
- List of possible dwarf planets
- Lists of small Solar System bodies
|
19,138,327 |
Early life of Samuel Johnson
| 1,153,865,181 |
Life of the English author (1709–1784)
|
[
"Early lives by writer",
"Samuel Johnson"
] |
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784) was an English author born in Lichfield, Staffordshire. He was a sickly infant who early on began to exhibit the tics that would influence how people viewed him in his later years. From childhood he displayed great intelligence and an eagerness for learning, but his early years were dominated by his family's financial strain and his efforts to establish himself as a school teacher.
After a year spent studying at Pembroke College, Oxford, Johnson was forced to leave by lack of financial support. He tried to find employment as a teacher, but was unable to secure a long-term position. In 1735 he married Elizabeth "Tetty" Porter, a widow 20 years older than himself, and the responsibilities of this marriage made him determined to succeed as an educator. He established his own school, but the venture was unsuccessful. Thereafter, leaving his wife behind in Lichfield, he moved to London, where he spent the rest of his life. In London he began writing essays for The Gentleman's Magazine, and also befriended Richard Savage, a notorious rake and aspiring poet who claimed to be the disavowed son of a nobleman. Eventually he wrote the Life of Mr Richard Savage, his first successful literary biography. He also wrote the powerful poem London, an 18th-century version of Juvenal's Third Satire, as well as the tragic drama Irene, which was not produced until 1749, and even then was not successful.
Johnson began his literary career as a minor Grub Street hack writer, but he went on to make lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. His early works, especially London and Life of Mr Richard Savage, contain Johnson's emerging views on biography, morality, and literature in general.
## Parents
Johnson's parents were Michael Johnson, a bookseller, and his wife, Sarah Ford. Michael was the first bookseller of reputation in the Staffordshire community of Lichfield. He also owned a parchment factory, which allowed him to produce his own books. Little is known of his background, except that he and his brothers were apprenticed as booksellers. Michael's father, William Johnson, was described as a "yeoman" and a "gentleman" in the Stationers' Company records, but there is little evidence to suggest that he was from a noble family. William was the first Johnson to move to Lichfield and died shortly thereafter. Michael Johnson, after leaving his apprenticeship at 24, followed in his father's footsteps and took up a job selling books on Sadler Street, Lichfield. Three years later Michael Johnson became warden of a charity known as the Conduit Lands Trust, and shortly afterwards was made churchwarden of St Mary's church.
At the age of 29, Michael Johnson was engaged to be married to a local woman, Mary Neild, but she cancelled the engagement. Twenty years later, in 1706, he married Sarah Ford. She came from a middle-class milling and farming family and was twelve years his junior, daughter of Cornelius Ford. Although both families had money, Samuel Johnson often claimed that he grew up in poverty. It is uncertain what happened between the marriage of his parents and Samuel's birth three years later to provoke a decline in the family's fortunes, but Michael Johnson quickly became overwhelmed with debt from which he was never able to recover.
## Childhood
Johnson was born in Lichfield at 4:00 pm on Wednesday, 18 September 1709 at the family home above his father's bookshop, near Market Square, across from St Mary's Church. His mother was 40 when she gave birth, a matter for sufficient concern that George Hector, a "man-midwife" and a surgeon of "great reputation", was brought in to assist during the birth. The baby was named Samuel, after Sarah's brother Samuel Ford. He did not cry and, with doubts surrounding the newborn's health, his aunt claimed "that she would not have picked such a poor creature up in the street". As it was feared the baby might die, the vicar of St Mary's was summoned to perform a baptism. Two godfathers were chosen: Samuel Swynfen, a physician and graduate of Pembroke College, and Richard Wakefield, a lawyer, coroner, and Lichfield town clerk.
Johnson's health improved and he was placed in the nursing care of Joan Marklew. During this period he contracted what is believed to have been scrofula, known at that time as the "King's Evil". Sir John Floyer, a former physician to King Charles II, recommended that the young Johnson should receive the "royal touch", which he received from Queen Anne on 30 March 1712 at St James's Palace. Johnson was given a ribbon in memory of the event, which he claimed to have worn for the rest of his life. However, the ritual was ineffective and an operation was performed that left him with permanent scarring across his face and body. Sarah later gave birth to a second boy, Nathaniel. Having two children put financial strain on the family; Michael was unable to keep on top of the debts he had accumulated over the years, and his family was no longer able to maintain the lifestyle it had previously enjoyed.
Johnson demonstrated signs of great intelligence as a child, and his parents, to his later disgust, took pleasure in showing off his "newly acquired accomplishments". His education began at the age of three, when his mother had him memorise and recite passages from the Book of Common Prayer. When Johnson turned four, he was sent to a nearby "school" on Dam Street, where "Dame" Anne Oliver, the proprietor, gave lessons to young children in the living-room of a cottage. Johnson especially enjoyed his time with Dame Oliver, later remembering her fondly. At the age of six he was sent to a retired shoemaker to continue his education, and a year later was enrolled at Lichfield Grammar School; he excelled in Latin under Humphrey Hawkins, his teacher in the lower school.
During this time Johnson began exhibiting the tics that would influence how others viewed him in his later years, and which formed the basis for his posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome (TS). TS develops in childhood; it follows a fairly reliable course in terms of the age of onset and the history of the severity of symptoms. Tics may appear up to the age of eighteen, but the most typical age of onset is from five to seven. Johnson's tics and gesticulations manifested after his childhood scrofula; studies suggest that environmental and infectious factors—while not causing Tourette's—can affect the severity of the disorder. Pearce describes Johnson's birth as a "very difficult and dangerous labour", and adds that Johnson had many illnesses throughout his life: he "suffered from bouts of melancholy, crushing guilt, habitual insomnia, and he endured a morbid fear of loneliness and of dying." He also was "disturbed by scruples of infidelity" from the age of 10.
Although TS caused problems in his private and public life, it lent Johnson "great verbal and vocal energy". He excelled in his education and was promoted to the upper school at the age of nine, to be tutored by Edward Holbrooke. The school was directed by the Reverend John Hunter, a man known for his scholarship and, like Holbrooke, his brutality, which caused Johnson to become dissatisfied with his education. However, during this time he did befriend Edmund Hector, nephew of his "man-midwife" George Hector, and John Taylor, both of whom he remained in contact with throughout his life.
### Cornelius Ford
At the age of 16, Johnson was given the opportunity to stay with his cousins, the Fords, at Pedmore, Worcestershire. There he bonded with Cornelius Ford, the son of his mother's brother, and Ford employed his knowledge of the classics to tutor Johnson while he was not attending school. Johnson enjoyed his time with Ford, who encouraged Johnson to pursue his studies and to become a man of letters. Johnson remembered one moment of Ford's teachings: Ford told him to "grasp the leading praecognita of all things... grasps the trunk hard only, and you will shake all the branches". Ford was a successful, well-connected academic, familiar with many society figures such as Alexander Pope.
Ford was also a notorious alcoholic whose excesses contributed to his death six years after Johnson's visit. This event deeply affected Johnson, and he remembered Ford in his Life of Fenton, saying that Ford's abilities, "instead of furnishing convivial merriments to the voluptuous and dissolute, might have enabled him to excel among the virtuous and the wise". Having spent six months with his cousins, Johnson returned to Lichfield, but Hunter, "angered by the impertinence of this long absence", refused to allow him to continue at the grammar school.
Unable to return to Lichfield Grammar School, Johnson was enrolled, with the help of Ford and his half-brother Gregory Hickman, into the King Edward VI Grammar School at Stourbridge. The headmaster was John Wentworth, and he took care to work with Johnson on his translation exercises. Because the school was located near Pedmore, Johnson was able to spend more time with the Fords and get to know his other relatives in the area. During this time he began writing poems and produced many verse translations. However, he spent only six months at Stourbridge before returning once again to his parents' home in 1727. When Boswell was writing his Life of Samuel Johnson, he was told by Johnson's school friend Edmund Hector Johnson's leaving the Stourbridge school was due in part to a fight Johnson and Wentworth had over Latin grammar. For companionship, Johnson spent time with Hector and John Taylor, two of his schoolfriends, and he soon fell in love with Hector's younger sister, Ann. This first love was not to last, and Johnson later claimed to Boswell, "She was the first woman with whom I was in love. It dropped out of my head imperceptibly, but she and I shall always have a kindness for each other."
Johnson's future now began to look uncertain, as his father was deeply in debt. To earn money, Johnson stitched books for his father, although poor eyesight—a result of his childhood illness—meant he eschewed the work involved. It is possible that Johnson spent most of his time in his father's bookshop reading various works and building his literary knowledge. During this time, Johnson met Gilbert Walmesley, the Registrar of the Ecclesiastical Court and a frequent visitor to the bookshop. Walmesley took a liking to Johnson, and the two discussed various intellectual topics during the two years Johnson spent working in the shop. Their relationship was soon put on hold; Sarah Johnson's cousin, Elizabeth Harriotts, died in February 1728 and left her £40 (about £ as of ), which was used to send Johnson back to school.
### College
On 31 October 1728, a few weeks after he turned 19, Johnson entered Pembroke College, Oxford as a fellow-commoner. The inheritance did not cover all of his expenses at Pembroke, but Andrew Corbet, a friend and student at Pembroke, offered to make up the deficit. Corbet left Pembroke soon after Johnson arrived, so this source of aid disappeared. To meet the expenses, Michael Johnson allowed his son to borrow a hundred books from his bookshop, at a great cost to himself, and these books were not fully returned to Michael until many years later.
On the day of Johnson's entrance interview for Pembroke, his anxious father introduced him to his future tutor, William Jorden, hoping to make an impression. During the interview, his father was "very full of the merits of his son, and told the company he was a good scholar, and a poet, and wrote Latin verses", which caused Johnson significant embarrassment. Michael's praise was unnecessary; Johnson's interview went so well that one of the interviewers, a 26-year-old William Adams (Jorden's cousin, later Master of Pembroke), claimed that Johnson was "the best qualified for the University that he had ever known come there". Throughout the interview, Johnson sat quietly while listening to his father and the interviewers, until he interrupted and quoted Macrobius. The interviewers were surprised that "a School-boy should know Macrobius", and he was accepted immediately.
At Pembroke, Johnson made many friends, but neglected many of the mandatory lectures, and ignored calls for poems. He did complete one poem, the first of his tutorial exercises, on which he spent comparable time, and which provoked surprise and applause. He was later asked by his tutor to produce a Latin translation of Alexander Pope's Messiah as a Christmas exercise. Johnson completed half of the translation in one afternoon and the rest the following morning. Although the poem brought him praise, it did not bring the material benefit he had hoped for. The poem was brought to Pope's attention; according to Sir John Hawkins, Pope claimed that he could not tell if it was the original or not. However, Johnson's friend John Taylor dismissed this "praise" because Johnson's father had already published the translation before Johnson sent a copy to Pope, and Pope could have been remarking about it being a duplication of the published edition.
Regardless, Pope remarked that the work was very finely done, but that did not prevent Johnson from being violently angry at his father's actions in preempting his sending Pope a copy of the poem. The poem later appeared in Miscellany of Poems (1731), edited by John Husbands, a Pembroke tutor, and is the earliest surviving publication of any of Johnson's writings. Johnson spent the rest of his time studying, even over the Christmas vacation. He drafted a "plan of study" called "Adversaria", which was left unfinished, and used his time to learn French while working on his knowledge of Greek.
Although he later praised Jorden, Johnson came to odds with him over what he considered to be Jorden's "meanness" of abilities. He discouraged his friend Taylor, who came to Pembroke in March, from having Jorden as his tutor, and Taylor was soon encouraged to go to Christ Church to be taught by Edmund Bateman. Johnson appreciated Bateman's skill as a lecturer, and he would often travel to meet Taylor to discuss the lectures. However, Johnson lacked the funds to even replace his shoes, and so he started to make the journey barefoot. In response, those of Christ Church began to mock Johnson, and he soon kept to his own room for the rest of his time at Pembroke, with Taylor visiting him instead.
After thirteen months, poverty forced Johnson to leave Oxford without taking a degree, and he returned to Lichfield. During his last weeks at Oxford, Jorden left Pembroke, and Johnson was given William Adams as a tutor in his place. He enjoyed Adams as a tutor, but by December, Johnson was already a quarter behind in his student fees, and he was forced to return home. He left behind many of the books that his father had previously lent him, both because he could not afford the expense of transporting all of them and as a symbolic gesture that he hoped to return to the school soon.
## Early career
There is little record of Johnson's life between the end of 1729 and 1731; he most likely lived with his parents when experiencing bouts of mental anguish and physical pains. After these years of illness, his tics and gesticulations associated with TS became more noticeable and were "commented on by many observers". To further complicate Johnson's life, his father was deeply in debt by 1731 and had lost much of his standing in Lichfield. An usher's position became available at Stourbridge Grammar School, but Johnson's lack of a degree saw him passed over, on 6 September 1731. Instead, he stayed at the home of Gregory Hickman, Cornelius Ford's half brother, writing poetry. It was there that he heard the devastating news that Cornelius had died in London, on 22 August 1731; later, in his personal "Annales", he pointed to that moment as one of the most important of his life.
At about the same time, Johnson's father became ill; he developed an "inflammatory fever" by the end of the year. He died in December 1731 and was buried at St Michael on Greenhill, Lichfield on 7 December 1731. He left no will, and Johnson received only £20 from Michael's estate of £60 (£ as of ). In an act "almost like religious penance", Johnson honoured his father's memory 50 years later by returning to his bookstall in Uttoxeter to make amends for his refusal to work the stall while his father lay dying. Richard Warner kept Johnson's account of the scene:
> ... a postchaise to Uttoxeter, and going into the market at the time of high business, uncovered my head, and stood with it bare an hour before the stall which my father had formerly used, exposed to the sneers of the standers-by and the inclemency of the weather.
Johnson eventually found employment as undermaster at a school in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire. He was paid £20 a year (£ as of ), enough to support himself. The school was run by Sir Wolstan Dixie, 4th Baronet, who allowed Johnson to teach even though he did not have a degree. The unconventional Dixie allowed Johnson to live in his own mansion, Bosworth Hall. Although the arrangement may seem congenial, Johnson was treated as "a kind of domestick chaplain, so far, at least, as to say grace at table, but was treated with what he represented as intolerable harshness; and, after suffering for a few months such complicated misery, he relinquished a situation which all his life afterwards he recollected with the strongest aversion, and even a degree of horrour". Still, Johnson found pleasure in teaching even though he thought it boring. By June 1732, he had returned home, and, after a fight with Dixie, quit the school.
Johnson spent the rest of his time at Lichfield looking for a position at the other local schools, and, after being turned down for a position in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, he spent his time with his friend, Hector. Hector lived in the home of Thomas Warren, on High Street, Birmingham, and Johnson was invited to stay there as a guest in the autumn of 1732. Warren was at that time starting his Birmingham Journal, and he enlisted Johnson's help, although no copies of the essays he wrote for the paper now survive. His stay with Hector and Warren was not to last, and Johnson moved into the house of a man named Jarvis on 1 June 1733. During this time, Johnson started to slip into a "state of 'absence'" and he began to treat his friends with "abuse".
His connection with Warren continued to grow, and Johnson proposed to translate Jerónimo Lobo's account of the Abyssinians. Johnson read Abbe Joachim Le Grand's French translations, and he thought that a shorter version might be "useful and profitable". He began work on the edition and a finished section was taken to be printed during the winter of 1733–1734. Johnson's nerves got the best of him, and after a breakdown he was unable to continue working, but felt obligated to meet his contract. To finish the rest, Johnson dictated directly to Hector, who then took the copy to the printer and made any corrections. It amounted to a month's work, and, a year later, his A Voyage to Abyssinia was finally published.
Johnson returned to Lichfield in February 1734, where he began an annotated edition of Poliziano's Latin poems, along with a history of Latin poetry from Petrarch to Poliziano. The work was designed to fill 480 pages and provide a detailed commentary and corresponding notes. By completing such a work as this, Johnson hoped to become known as a scholar-poet similar to Julius Caesar Scaliger, Daniel and Nikolaes Heinsius, Desiderius Erasmus, and Poliziano, all of whom Johnson admired. Johnson began on 15 June 1734 and printed a Proposal for the work on 5 August 1734. However, the project did not receive enough funds and it was soon brought to an end. Although the project failed, it shows that Johnson identified himself with neo-Latin humanism.
### Marriage
Johnson identified himself as a poet and, in November 1734, applied to Edward Cave to work on the poetry reviews for The Gentleman's Magazine. In a letter written under the name S. Smith, Johnson said, "As You appear no less sensible than Your Readers of the defects of your Poetical Article, You will not be displeased, if, in order to the improvement of it, I communicate to You the sentiments of a person, who will undertake on reasonable terms sometimes to fill a column". In particular, Johnson suggested removing the magazine's "low Jests" and "awkward Buffoonery" and then replacing them with poems, inscriptions, and "short literary Dissertations in Latin or English" written by himself. Cave did not accept Johnson's proposal to write a column, but he did employ Johnson occasionally to work on minor aspects of the periodical.
Around this time, Johnson became close to a man named Harry Porter, and remained with him during his terminal illness. Porter died on 3 September 1734, leaving his wife Elizabeth (née Jervis, and nicknamed "Tetty") widowed at the age of 45, with three children. Months later, Johnson began to court the widow; Reverend William Shaw claims that "the first advances probably proceeded from her, as her attachment to Johnson was in opposition to the advice and desire of all her relations". Johnson and Elizabeth became close, and they quickly fell in love. She admired Johnson greatly and claimed that he was "the most sensible man that I ever saw in my life".
Johnson was inexperienced in relationships, but the well-to-do widow encouraged him and provided for him with her substantial savings. The two were married on 9 July 1735, at St Werburgh's Church in Derby. The Porter family did not approve of the match, partly because Johnson was 25 and Elizabeth was 21 years his elder. His mother's marriage to Johnson so disgusted her son Jervis that he stopped talking to her. Her other son Joseph later accepted the marriage, and her daughter, Lucy, accepted Johnson from the start.
### Edial Hall
During the previous June while working as a tutor for Thomas Whitby's children, Johnson had applied for the position of headmaster at Solihull School. Walmesley lent his support to Johnson's application, but Johnson was passed over because the school's directors thought he was "a very haughty, ill-natured gent., and that he has such a way of distorting his face (which though he can't help) the gent[s] think it may affect some lads". He was also rejected for a position at a school in Brewood for similar reasons. Johnson did not give up his ambition to teach; with Walmesley's encouragement, he decided to set up his own school.
In the autumn of 1735, Johnson opened a private academy at Edial, near Lichfield. The building, Edial Hall, was a large house with a pyramid-shaped roof and a unique design; a back room served as the schoolroom while the rest housed Johnson's family. He had only three pupils, David Garrick, George Garrick and Lawrence Offley; David Garrick—18 at the time—went on to become one of the most famous actors of his day. Johnson designed a curriculum that focused on the reading of classical literature, starting with what he considered to be easier works, such as those by Corderius and Erasmus, before slowly progressing to Cornelius Nepos and finally onto Ovid, Vergil, and Horace. The school was advertised in the June and July 1736 editions of The Gentleman's Magazine: "At Edial, near Litchfield, in Staffordshire, Young Gentlemen are Boarded, and Taught the Latin and Greek Languages, by Samuel Johnson".
After being open for little more than a year, the school failed in February 1737, gaining Johnson a reputation as a failed schoolmaster. He slowly abandoned his desire to teach to focus more on writing his first major work, the historical tragedy Irene. The play did not earn him the money he had hoped for, though, until Garrick produced it in 1749.
On 2 March 1737, penniless, Johnson left for London with his former pupil David Garrick. To make things worse, Johnson received word that his brother had died on the day they left. However, their prospects were not completely hopeless, as Garrick was set to inherit a large sum the next year. Also, Garrick had connections in London, and the two would stay with his distant relative, Richard Norris, who lived on Exeter Street. Johnson did not stay there long, and set out for Greenwich near the Golden Hart Tavern to finish Irene. During that time, he wrote to Cave on 12 July 1737 and proposed a translation for Paolo Sarpi's The History of the Council of Trent (1619), which Cave did not accept until months later.
Johnson started working on the translation of Sarpi before Cave approved, and he returned home to his wife during this time. In all, he managed to write between four hundred and eight hundred pages of text with corresponding commentary before he stopped working on it in April 1739. In October 1737, Johnson brought his wife to London; they first lived at Woodstock Street and then moved to 6 Castle Street. Soon, Johnson found employment with Cave, and wrote for his The Gentleman's Magazine. His work for the magazine and other publishers during this time "is almost unparalleled in range and variety", and "so numerous, so varied and scattered" that "Johnson himself could not make a complete list".
In May 1738, his first major work, a poem called London, was published anonymously. The work was based on Juvenal's Third Satire and describes the character Thales's leaving for Wales to escape the problems of London. In particular, the poem describes how London is a place of crime, corruption, and the neglect of the poor. Johnson could not bring himself to regard the poem as granting him any merit as a poet; however, Alexander Pope claimed that the author "will soon be déterré" (brought to light, become well known), although it did not immediately happen.
In August, Johnson was denied a position as master of the Appleby Grammar School because a master's degree from Oxford or Cambridge was required. To ensure that he would not suffer rejection again, Pope asked John Gower, a man with influence in the Appleby community, to have a degree awarded to Johnson. Gower attempted to have a degree awarded to Johnson from Oxford, but he was told that it was "too much to be asked." Gower then wrote to a friend of Jonathan Swift to persuade him to use his influence at Trinity College Dublin to have a masters awarded to Johnson, which could then be used to justify a masters awarded to Johnson from Oxford. However, Swift refused to act on Johnson's behalf. Regardless of Swift's motivation in not acting on Johnson's behalf, or how Johnson reacted to Swift's actions, it is known that Johnson then after refused to appreciate Swift as a poet, writer, or a satirist, with one exception: Swift's Tale of a Tub, of which Johnson doubted Swift's authorship.
Between 1737 and 1739, Johnson became close to Richard Savage. Feeling guilty for his own poverty, Johnson stopped living with his wife and spent time with Savage. Together, they would roam the streets at night without enough money to stay in taverns or sleep in "night-cellars". Savage was both a poet and a playwright, and Johnson was reported to enjoy spending time and discussing various topics with him, along with drinking and other merriment. However, poverty eventually caught up with Savage, and Pope, along with Savage's other friends, gave him an "annual pension" in return for him agreeing to move to Wales. Savage ended up in Bristol however, and once again fell into debt by reliving his former London lifestyle. He was soon in debtors' prison and died in 1743. A year later, Johnson wrote Life of Mr Richard Savage (1744) at Cave's prompting, and this work formed the beginning of Johnson's long-lasting success. The biography was a "moving" work that, according to Walter Jackson Bate, "remains one of the innovative works in the history of biography".
## Early works
Johnson's early works and early life have been neglected topics within Johnson scholarship. As a result, he is primarily known for the events surrounding his later life and later works like A Dictionary of the English Language. This imbalance originates in the failure of James Boswell, Johnson's friend and companion, to discuss in great detail Johnson's childhood and the beginning of his career within the Life of Samuel Johnson, the most famous biography on Johnson. In particular, Boswell ignored Johnson's early politics and political writings which show a concern with Sir Robert Walpole's political administration.
His first major work, the poem London, contains an early version of Johnson's ethics and morality system. Within the poem, he combined attacks on the politics of Walpole and the British government with the immoral actions of the common Londoner to form a general satire of 18th-century London society. Johnson compares London to the Roman Empire in its decline and blames moral and political corruption for its fall. Although Johnson did not start his literary criticism career until later, London is an example of what Johnson thought poetry should be: it is youthful and joyous, but it also relies on simple language and easy to understand imagery.
Johnson's first major success came with Life of Savage, but it was not his first biography; Savage was the fourth in a series which also included biographies of Jean-Philippe Baratier, Robert Blake and Francis Drake. Although it was not the only biography that appeared immediately after Savage's death, it became the most popular, and it embodied Johnson's ideas on what a biography should be.
The book did contain some inaccuracies, particularly those surrounding Savage's claim that he was the illegitimate child of a nobleman. It was successful in its partial analysis of Savage's poetry and in portraying insights into Savage's personality, but for all of its literary achievements it did not bring immediate fame or income to Johnson or to Cave; it did, though, provide Johnson with a welcome small income at an opportune time in his life. More importantly, the work helped to mould Johnson into a biographical career; it was included in his later Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets series.
|
19,969,091 |
Mr. Dooley
| 1,171,381,363 |
Fictional character created by Finley Peter Dunne
|
[
"Fictional Irish people",
"Fictional bartenders",
"Fictional characters from Chicago",
"Fictional immigrants to the United States",
"Literary characters introduced in 1893",
"Male characters in literature"
] |
Mr. Dooley (or Martin J. Dooley) is a fictional Irish immigrant bartender created by American journalist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne. Dooley was the subject of many Dunne columns between 1893 and 1915, and again in 1924 and 1926. Dunne's essays contain the bartender's commentary on various topics (often national or international affairs). They became extremely popular during the 1898 Spanish–American War and remained so afterwards; they are collected in several books. The essays are in the form of conversations in Irish dialect between Mr. Dooley, who in the columns owns a tavern in the Bridgeport area of Chicago, and one of the fictional bar's patrons (in later years, usually Malachi Hennessy) with most of the column a monologue by Dooley. The pieces are not widely remembered, but originated lasting sayings such as "the Supreme Court follows the election returns".
Mr. Dooley was invented by Dunne to replace a similar character whose real-life analogue had objected. By having the garrulous bartender speak in dialect and live in an unfashionable area of Chicago, Dunne gained a freedom of expression he often did not have in standard English. The first four years of the weekly column made Mr. Dooley popular in Chicago, but little noticed elsewhere. Dunne was a rapidly rising newspaperman, and the pieces mainly appeared in the Chicago paper which he worked for. During that time, Dunne detailed the daily life of Bridgeport through Dooley's lips, painting a portrait of ethnic urban life unparalleled in 19th-century American literature.
Dunne's bartender came to wider attention with the wartime columns, and the Dooley pieces were soon in newspapers nationwide. Both the columns and the books collecting them gained national acclaim. Beginning around 1905, Dunne had increasing trouble finding time and inspiration for new columns, and they ended in 1915, except for a brief resurrection in the mid-1920s. Even in Dunne's own time (he died in 1936), his work was becoming obscure in part due to his use of dialect, and the unusual spellings that it required have proved a lasting barrier for potential readers.
## Chronology
### Beginnings
Peter Dunne was born on July 10, 1867, in Chicago, the son of Irish immigrants; he added the first name "Finley", his mother's last name at birth, in his early twenties. A precocious boy, he did well in elementary school but finished last in his high school class of 50, possibly because of the death of his mother, and was sent to work at about age 17 in 1884. Dunne got a menial job on the Chicago Tribune, where superiors soon noticed his street smarts, and made him police reporter. Over the next few years, Dunne worked for several Chicago papers, gaining in salary and responsibility, and by 1888 at age 21 was city editor and a political writer for the Chicago Times.
While at the Times, Dunne may have made his first experiments in Irish dialect: an anonymous police reform series published in January 1889. "Officer Quinn and his Friends" features an Irish-American policeman who digs up a suspicious footprint in the snow. Quinn means to take it to the station but is sidetracked at a saloon, emerging several hours later to find the evidence melted. The writer of the Quinn pieces uses unneeded Irishisms, and his spelling is often awkward. When Dunne took a new job with the Tribune later in 1889, the use of Irish dialect in stories followed him; one account of a conversation between two Irish-American members of the city council is rendered as they would have spoken it. He first signed his name to Irish dialect pieces in the second half of 1890, in a series about real-life Colonel Thomas Jefferson Dolan, a small-time Democratic hanger-on. The series, which ended when Dunne left for the Chicago Herald in late 1890, contains elements of the Dooley stories, including mostly being told from a single perspective (an alter ego for Dunne), as well as painting a detailed portrait of the Irish-American scene. By then, Dunne had polished his use of Irish dialect.
The early 1890s saw an increasing use of dialect in Chicago's newspapers, sometimes to mock, but more often to give voice to the immigrant communities that filled Chicago's neighborhoods, and whose worth was being appreciated. By 1892, Dunne, who was still only aged 25, was editorial chairman of the Chicago Evening Post. Its management was marketing (unsuccessfully, as it proved) a smaller-size weekly edition to compete with the large Sunday papers. Cornelius McAuliff, Dunne's editor, asked him to write a humorous piece for each edition of the new periodical. Accordingly, Dunne wrote for the Sunday Post on December 4, 1892, a piece in Irish dialect called "Frank's Visit to Grover", concerning the efforts of former congressman Frank Lawler to gain appointment as Chicago's postmaster, a political plum to be awarded by the new president, Grover Cleveland. Lawler's visit to New York to see Cleveland is described by another Irishman, Alderman Johnny Powers—Cleveland promises the post (Lawler did not in real life receive it) before Lawler and the president-elect settle down to drinking and shooting pool.
In the December 11, 1892 Sunday paper, Dunne wrote another dialect column, this time set in the upscale Dearborn Street saloon of Colonel Malachi McNeary (in all columns but the first spelled McNeery). That barkeeper was based on James McGarry, owner of a saloon near Chicago's newspaper district; Dunne and other journalists would drink there and write their stories. Beginning in the second McNeery column, the listener for his monologues is Johnny McKenna, a real-life figure, who was a Republican in a mostly Democratic Irish community, and who often received government jobs as a token of bipartisanship. The World's Columbian Exposition was the major event of 1893 in Chicago, and McNeery was used as a mouthpiece for Dunne's commentary on the events and sights of the fair. For example, McNeery views a meeting of the fair's Board of Lady Managers, chaired by Bertha Palmer, who in the column proves incapable of stopping an argument between the members.
When the Sunday Post was discontinued because of financial losses, the McNeery columns were moved to the Saturday edition because of their popularity. This local fame came with some annoyance to McNeery's real-life analogue, McGarry, who found himself called McNeery, and even stared at by a Swedish immigrant, a nationality held in disdain by Chicago Irish. One afternoon, when Dunne was in McGarry's tavern, the journalist found him uncommunicative, until his sudden explosion, "You can't put printer's ink on me with impunity," announcing that he intended to see Dunne's publisher, John R. Walsh. According to Grace Eckley in her volume on Dunne's works, the political positions McNeery was made to espouse were contrary to those of some of McGarry's customers, placing him in an uncomfortable position. The following day, Walsh asked Dunne to change the name, but the writer decided this would not be enough if the fictional saloon was kept as is; instead a humbler establishment (and bartender) in some remoter part of Chicago seemed called for. McKenna, unlike McGarry, was enjoying the attention, and, hearing of the problem, took Dunne to his heavily Irish neighborhood of Bridgeport, introducing him to locals there. Moving the venue to Bridgeport had advantages. A "shanty Irish" barkeeper could be permitted greater freedom of expression than McNeery, for to more urbane Chicagoans, Bridgeporters were unsophisticated, humorous hicks. As Dunne later put it, "while it might be dangerous to call an alderman a thief in English no one could sue if a comic Irishman denounced the statesman as a thief". McGarry's heavy brogue featured in McNeery's speech, and was retained in the move to Bridgeport.
Dunne introduced the change in his column on October 7, 1893. McNeery was depicted as having gone home to Ireland, and the bereft McKenna, seeking companionship, enters the Bridgeport saloon of Martin J. Dooley, located on Archer Avenue (to become famous as "Archey Road"), in which he had not been in some years, but where Mr. Dooley greets him as if they had parted the day before. Dooley serves him two drinks and an earful on local affairs—McKenna speaks only two brief sentences, one of which is his greeting. Dunne later stated that at first, he viewed the Dooley pieces as just another weekly feature, done hurriedly in an hour without much attempt at polish.
### Local man of wisdom (1893–1898)
Over the first few months of weekly Mr. Dooley columns, in 1893 and 1894, the character of Dooley began to take shape. The backstory that Dunne gave Dooley began with the future bartender's birth in County Roscommon, Ireland (where McGarry was born), about sixty years previously. Dooley was one of the roughly 2,000,000 Irish people who emigrated to North America during the Great Famine (1845–49), coming across on one of the coffin ships, and later spoke of the hardships and deaths on the journey. Arriving in New York, he tried Pittsburgh and St. Louis, and settled in Chicago in the early 1850s. He worked in the typical occupations available to Irish of the time, as a laborer swinging a pickaxe and then driving horse-drawn wagons; but found these employments not to his liking, as each was dominated by Irishmen from counties other than Roscommon. He remains suspicious of, or even hostile towards, men from certain other counties, with "sheep-stealin' Mayo men" heading the list. Tiring of employed labor, he established a bar on Archer Avenue, spending the Civil War there. His bar became the sort of community tavern around which, together with home and church, Irish life revolved. He interested himself in Democratic Party politics, and after a successful two-year term as a precinct captain between 1873 and 1875, was mentioned for the post of city alderman but was not selected to be a candidate. He remains a bachelor, running his bar which caters to rolling mill workers employed nearby, and dubs himself a "saloonkeeper and Doctor of Philosophy".
Although Mr. Dooley would become famous for his commentary on national affairs, the columns of the first years were generally more local in scope. Through the lips of Dooley, Dunne built a detailed view of Bridgeport, a vibrant community with its own idiosyncrasies and with important local figures. According to historian Charles Fanning, this made Bridgeport "the most solidly realized ethnic neighborhood in nineteenth-century American literature". In the first year, less than half of the columns were political in nature, but this proportion increased as Dunne used Dooley as a weapon for reform of the corrupt city council; according to Dunne's biographer, Elmer Ellis, "over the eight years from 1892 to 1900 there was no single force for improvement more important than the Dooley essays". Dunne depicted Bridgeport as a community whose Irish nature is on the verge of dissolution as other ethnic groups move in, an evolution to which Dooley reacts in various ways ranging from resignation to near-panic.
Commerce from the Columbian Exposition had helped shield Chicago from the gloom of the economic Panic of 1893, which enveloped much of the rest of the nation, but after the exposition closed, the winter of 1893–94 saw much unemployment, suffering and starvation. As Irish immigrants were disproportionately employed as laborers, and had less education than other ethnic groups, Bridgeport was hit especially hard by the depression, and this was reflected in the columns. Dunne's anger especially focused on George Pullman, whose wage cuts for his workers (while not cutting the rents of their houses, which his company owned) helped provoke the Pullman Strike of 1894. In his column of August 25, Dunne wrote,
> Mr. Dooley swabbed the bar in a melancholy manner and turned again with the remark, "But what's it all to Pullman? When God quarried his heart a happy man was made. He cares no more for them little matters of life or death than I do for O'Connor's [bar] tab. 'The women and children are dying of hunger,' they say, 'will you not put out your hand to help them?,' they say. 'Ah, what the hell,' says George. 'What the hell', he says. 'James,' he says, 'a bottle of champagne and a piece of cranberry pie. What the hell, what the hell, what the hell'."
>
> "I heard two died yesterday," said Mr. McKenna. "Two women."
>
> "Poor things, poor things. But," said Mr. Dooley, once more swabbing the bar, "what the hell."
Dunne brought this column into the Post's composing room to be set in type. When he returned later to check the proof, the typesetters began to drum their sticks on their cases, and then burst into lengthy applause, an experience Dunne described as the most moving of his life.
Mr. Dooley would become known for his humor, which was present in many of the Bridgeport columns, but the Pullman pieces were not the only ones to be serious. One had the drunkard Grady's little girl come shivering to Dooley's door on a winter's night with a can to be filled with beer for her father. Dooley accompanies her home, and tries to beat some decency into the sodden Grady. Another, with Dooley's recollections of a long-ago Christmas in Roscommon, caused Dunne to be brought to tears by his own writing. In another, Dooley joins with Father Kelly, the parish priest, in getting relief for "the man Carey down the street that nobody likes, him being a notorious infidel". Dooley and the priest gather provisions for the atheist, later getting him a job, and endure his speech against the Bible until Kelly cuts him off, "What talk have ye? Go an' starve no more." Although he applauded such acts of individual charity, Dunne through Dooley denigrated charitable organizations, wondering that "a man can square himself with his conscience by giving one thousand dollars to a policeman and telling him to distribute it! Why don't they get the poor up in a cage in Lincoln Park and hand them food on the end of a window pole, if they're afraid they'll bite[?]"
Among the comic themes during the Chicago years was that of courtship and marriage, with much humor made from the supposed aversion of many Irish males to the altar. The local plumber, Dacey, does not fall to matrimony until he enters the wrong city building and comes out with a marriage license rather than one for a dog. The fireman Hannigan's courting of Dolan's daughter is broken off after fifteen years when he is embarrassed by her giving him a wig as a Christmas present to cover his bald head; but for that she would be courted still. With Danny Duggan too shy to propose, Father Kelly acts on his behalf, resulting in "the dear little colleen trembling and crying, but holding on to him like a pair of ice tongs".
By 1895, the Mr. Dooley columns had attracted a large following in Chicago, though because he did not sign them, few knew the name of the author outside the newspaper trade. The two Democratic morning newspapers in Chicago at that time were the Herald, owned by James W. Scott, and the Times, which like the Post was owned by Walsh. In early 1895, Scott bought Walsh's two papers, and merged the Times and Herald. The new Times-Herald promised to be a powerful progressive force, with the Post its afternoon auxiliary; but Scott almost immediately died. Both the Post and the merged paper were bought by H. H. Kohlsaat. One of the main supporters of the campaign of Ohio Governor William McKinley, a Republican, for the presidency, Kohlsaat soon announced a new editorial policy: the papers would be strictly nonpartisan, except that they would be for McKinley, for protectionism (which McKinley supported), "and for anything he wants". The new policy cramped Dunne's style not only in his editorial writing, but in the Mr. Dooley pieces as well. Both major candidates, McKinley and Democrat William Jennings Bryan, were the butts of Mr. Dooley's wit about equally, and the bartender noted with regret the partisan anger that filled the nation. That rancor led to the effective end of McKenna's role in the column, as he (a Silver Republican) differed with McKinley over the gold standard, and as its opponent would not let his name be used in a paper that backed it. The fictional Malachi Hennessy, more typical of Bridgeport than McKenna as a rolling mill worker with a large family (McKenna was a bachelor), became his replacement. Hennessy had first appeared in the column on June 22, 1895, making an ill-fated decision to umpire a baseball game, and had been brought back in June 1896 as a Democrat and a "free silver" supporter, a foil to McKenna, who was depicted as backing the gold standard. McKenna regretted his decision, but was infrequently mentioned thereafter. Hennessy, stolid, patient, and not very bright, was often the butt of Dooley's jokes, but Dunne dedicated his third collection of Dooley stories "To the Hennessys of the world who suffer and are silent."
### Mr. Dooley in war: sudden fame (1898)
During 1897, Dunne sometimes set his sights overseas, discussing Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Dooley noted that while the sun never set on her domains, the original owners did not get to "set" [sit] there either, "bein' kept movin' be the polis [police]". Late that year, Dunne moved to the Chicago Journal as managing editor and Mr. Dooley began to comment at his new venue in early 1898. Dunne had been limited at his old position by Kohlsaat's insistence that his papers support President McKinley's efforts to settle differences with Spain over Cuba short of war. At the Journal, where the journalism was yellow and shrill appeals for war the norm, Dunne labored under no such inhibitions. He had always turned away praise of the Dooley pieces from those aware of his authorship, wishing to be known as a serious writer. Because of the dialect, the Dooley columns were more difficult for him than writing editorials and columns in plain English. He had ended his last Dooley piece at the Post with the barkeeper bidding farewell, locking the saloon door (as Dunne put it) "perhaps for the last time", possibly meaning that Dooley was done. Dooley had been depicted as in favor of war against Spain in the Post, and Dunne favored military intervention to free Cuba. On February 19, 1898, four days after the USS Maine sank in Havana harbor, Dunne restored Dooley to his arsenal against the Spanish. Fanning wrote of Mr. Dooley's subsequent howls for war: "[A]bandoning his usual stance as a cool and neutral ironist, Mr. Dooley becomes one more loud, irrational voice expressing cruelly simplified hatred of Spain and anger at President McKinley. These new pieces mark the low point in the Dooley canon, for in them Dunne shatters the persona that he has built up so consistently."
By the time war was declared in late April 1898, Mr. Dooley had moderated his position, even if the Journal had not. On April 16, Dunne had Dooley paint a mocking portrait of Fitzhugh Lee, the U.S. consul in Havana whose belligerent reports were fueling the drive to war, in a column printed while the Journal'''s editorial page was praising Lee. But the real breakthrough was after the Battle of Manila Bay on May 1. That a battle had taken place was known, but as the American commander, Admiral George Dewey, was believed to have severed the cable lines, no word came to the United States, and the nation waited in suspense, fearing defeat. Then, news that Dewey had destroyed the dilapidated Spanish fleet arrived, but the details, and the fate of Dewey and his ships and men, were unknown. Before word came from Dewey that he had not lost a ship or man appeared the May 7 Mr. Dooley piece, "On His Cousin George", that is the admiral, for "Dewey or Dooley, 'tis all th' same". Dooley predicted that "he'll write home and say he's got the islands; and he'll turn them over to the government and go back to his ship, and Mark Hanna'll organize the Philippine Islands Jute and Cider Company, and the revolutionists'll wish they hadn't. That's what'll happen. Mark my word."
"On His Cousin George" was an immediate success, reprinted in over 100 newspapers. The columns had not been copyrighted; the Journal quickly acted to protect new essays, and thereafter collected reprint fees. Anecdotes poured in; a recitation of the column had calmed a savage meeting of the Texas Bar Association; another brought down the house at a meeting of California's Bohemian Club; the U.S. ambassador in London, Joseph Choate, read it to an audience of Britons. Mr. Dooley even reached the seats of power; Dunne's June 25, 1898 piece imagining a chaotic meeting of the president's cabinet was read to that body by Treasury Secretary Lyman Gage, a Chicagoan. Dunne struck a chord with his columns as people came to realize how badly bungled were many aspects of the war effort. A repeated target of Dunne's wit was commanding general Nelson A. Miles, noted for having designed his own uniforms, which arrived at the embarkation point in Tampa "mounted on a superb specyal ca-ar", and "his uniforms are coming down in special steel-protected bullion trains from the mine, where they've been kept for a year. He has ordered out the gold reserve for to equip his staff, numbering eight thousand men, many of whom are clubmen; and, as soon as he can have his pictures took, he will crush the Spanish with one blow". When Miles invaded Puerto Rico in July without much resistance by the Spanish, Mr. Dooley reported on the general's experience of combat: "He has been in great peril from a withering fire of bouquets, and he has met and overpowered some of the most savage orators in Puerto Rico; but, when I last heard of him, he had pitched his tents and ice-cream freezers near the enemy's wall, and was gradually silencing them with proclamations".
The Journal supported the retention of the Spanish colonies taken during the war, including the Philippines, but Mr. Dooley dissented, anticipating that there would be far more advantage for Americans who would exploit the islands than for the Filipinos whose lot imperialists said they were anxious to improve. "'We can't give you any votes, because we haven't more than enough to go around now, but we'll treat you the way a father should treat his children if we have to break every bone in your bodies. So come to our arms,' says we".
### Mr. Dooley in peace (1898–1900)
Friends had long urged Dunne to collect the Dooley pieces in book form, but he was reluctant, considering them lightweight. With the barkeeper now nationally known, Dunne finally agreed, and Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War appeared in November 1898. The book's preface was signed "F.P.D." the only time he would make even a slight acknowledgement of authorship in the eight Dooley books published in his lifetime, a gesture in vain as he was already becoming well known. It was an immediate bestseller, gaining favorable reviews from the critics. Dunne had selected almost all of the wartime pieces for the second half of the book (in War). At the time, he could not get copies of his columns from before 1895, and may have felt that non-Chicagoans would not appreciate Bridgeport; thus, just 5 of the 31 "peace" essays dealt only with the affairs of that neighborhood. He did include a piece that featured Molly Donahue, the new woman of the neighborhood, and also a moving tribute to a heroic local fireman. When Dooley reached Britain in 1899, first in pirated editions and then in an official one, the reception was again warm. In June 1899, the Journal wrote:
> England doubtless misses a good deal of the humor in Mr. Dunne's dialogue, but she finds enough to make her laugh. And she takes the whole thing more seriously and treats his achievement as a more dignified one than America found it. For America at moments almost forgot the real depth of thought and the political sagacity which lay behind the satire in sheer delight at the excruciating humor of the way in which it was expressed.
Dunne travelled to New York and to London in 1899, taking leave from the Journal. He was treated as a celebrity in both places. Even as he was feted for Mr. Dooley, he privately gave his creation little worth, telling the publisher of the second Dooley collection, Mr. Dooley in the Hearts of His Countrymen (1899) that he was free to make changes, or even exclude one of the pure Bridgeport stories. Dunne had been able to secure copies of most or all of his work, and the second volume contains "The Irishman Abroad", the fifth Dooley piece published; more than half are stories of Bridgeport, including some of Dunne's character studies of its denizens. The volume was well received by critics.
In 1900, Dunne moved to New York. Dooley's musings, since the war, had been entirely on affairs outside Chicago, with no Bridgeport columns, as Dunne needed to satisfy the demands of a national audience. In January 1900, just before he left the Journal, he wrote a Bridgeport piece, in which many of the earlier ones were recalled. This was the last Dooley piece written for a newspaper not to be syndicated; it appeared exclusively in the Journal.
### National sage (1900–1904)
Dunne had hoped that by moving to New York to write full-time, he would be able to greatly expand his output, and he signed to do several projects, including a play featuring Mr. Dooley, and for a series of third-person stories featuring Molly Donahue, Bridgeport's resident suffragist. But Dunne found that he could not increase his production, and that some of the Dooley projects were ill-suited to the character: the play went unwritten and the Molly Donahue stories were abandoned after four pieces. Dooley appears as a character in some of them. Fanning found them unsatisfactory, with a misplaced Dooley, deprived of his bar and control of the dialogue. Dunne was not happy with them either: a note from the author appeared in the Ladies' Home Journal after the fourth piece was published there, alleging ill-health and dissatisfaction with the product.
A third Dooley collection, Mr. Dooley's Philosophy, appeared in 1900. The lead story was "A Book Review", that is, Mr. Dooley's discussion of New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt's wartime memoir, The Rough Riders. In Mr. Dooley's version, Roosevelt wins the whole war by himself, a role slightly greater than that in his actual book. Dooley's conclusion: "No man that bears a grudge against himself'll ever be governor of a state. And if Teddy done it all he ought to say so and relieve the suspense. But if I were him I'd call the book Alone in Cuba." Somewhat to Dunne's surprise, "Rosenfelt" (as Dooley called him) took the sting in good humor, and when the two met, told Dunne of a young female admirer of his, who told the governor that she had read all of his books, with her favorite Alone in Cuba. Roosevelt was elected vice president on McKinley's ticket in 1900, and when he succeeded after the president was assassinated the following year, Dunne wrote of the new chief executive, the youngest to hold that position, "a man is ... old enough to be president when he becomes president. If he ain't, it'll age him."
Dunne also supported Roosevelt in late 1901 when the president invited Booker T. Washington, an African American, to the White House for a meal—the president's action caused outrage among white Southerners, who overwhelmingly voted for the Democratic Party. Dooley described Washington's visit as "going to be the ruination of President Teddy's chances in the South. Thousands of men who wouldn't have voted for him under any circumstances has now declared that under no circumstances would they now vote for him."
Another 1901 piece led to one of Mr. Dooley's most famous quotations. A number of lawsuits brought in the wake of the 1898 war dealt with the issue of whether the Constitution applied with full force in the former Spanish colonies annexed by the United States, none of which had been granted an organized government by Congress. This question was known as whether the Constitution follows the flag. In 1901, the United States Supreme Court decided these lawsuits, known as the Insular Cases. The justices' written opinions were difficult to understand, and the court deeply divided, but the net effect was to hold that the Constitution did not follow the flag. The decisions gave Mr. Dooley an opportunity to puncture the court's ivory-tower reputation, "no matter whether the constitution follows the flag or not, the Supreme Court follows the election returns". The phrase has often been quoted, sometimes by people who have never heard of Mr. Dooley.
The year 1902 saw a steady stream of high-quality Dooley pieces written by Dunne, with the barkeeper philosopher commenting on the events of the day, including King Edward's coronation, Arthur Conan Doyle's tales of Sherlock Holmes, and Arctic exploration. But most were on American politics. That Dunne was often a guest of Roosevelt at the White House did not spare the president from being skewered by Dooley, nor was the former Rough Rider's aggressive foreign policy spared. Dunne disliked imperialism, and was outraged by the actions of U.S. forces in the Philippine insurrection against American rule; he satirized Governor William Howard Taft's glowing report on progress there, "We are giving hundreds of these poor benighted heathen the well-known old-fashioned American water cure ... Everywhere, happiness, content, love of the step-mother country, except in places where there are people."
The presidential campaign of 1904, as Roosevelt sought election in his own right, brought Mr. Dooley ample opportunity to comment. The bartender mocked those who wished to be vice presidential candidate on Roosevelt's ticket, alleging that the Republicans "found a man from Wisconsin who was in drink and almost nominated him when his wife came in and dragged him away. They got Senator Fairbanks to accept ... by showing him a picture of our great and noble president trying to jump a horse over a six-foot fence". The president's enthusiastic campaigning attracted Mr. Dooley's attention: "And when Theodore Roosevelt kisses a baby thousands of mothers in all corners of the land hear the report and the baby knows it's been kissed and bears the honorable scar through life. Twenty years from now the country will be full of young fellows looking as though they'd graduated from a German college."
### Slow decline, apparent ending and brief resurrection (1905–1926)
Dunne had never found the actual writing of the Dooley pieces difficult, once he got started—it was finding that initial inspiration, and putting himself in a suitable frame of mind to compose, that he found increasingly hard after 1905. Aware that the columns were reaching an audience of millions and would be reviewed by critics when placed in book form, Dunne was reluctant to release pieces he considered substandard, and defended his position strongly in correspondence with the syndicators. In 1906, he joined with Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens in forming The American Magazine, a project that occupied time and energy, especially since his regular column, "In the Interpreter's House", contained musings like Mr. Dooley's but without brogue or barroom. This allowed Dunne to make his points without tedious dialect. Thus, the Dooley columns continued only irregularly, occupying parts of each year from 1905 to 1915.
When Mr. Dooley could be found behind his bar, his sayings remained at a high standard. Roosevelt remained a target, friend, and White House host, one who took seriously what Mr. Dooley said and corresponded with Dunne about it. In 1906, after the publication of Upton Sinclair's muckraking The Jungle, about the unsanitary horrors of the meatpacking trade, Dooley summed up the objections of the packers to the book, "if they had a blind man in the Health Department, a few competent friends on the Federal Bench, and [corrupt Illinois senator] Farmer Bill Lorimer to protect the cattle interests of the Great West, they cared not who made the novels of our country." In June 1907, Dooley and Hennessy speculated as to what Roosevelt would do when his term expired in 1909. Dooley stated that were he an ex-president, the publican would try to do something really hard and likely to take up the remainder of his days, "I'd thry to be President again".
None of the columns after Dunne joined The American Magazine attracted the attention the earlier ones had, but Mr. Dooley continued to comment on the issues of the day. Andrew Carnegie was a repeated target, as was John D. Rockefeller, whom Dooley summed up with "he never done anything wrong, save in the way of business" In 1909, during the debates over the Payne–Aldrich Tariff, Dunne examined the bill and came out of it with an exotic item called "divvy-divvy", which Mr. Dooley allowed, "was let in as a compliment to [Finance Committee chairman] Senator Aldrich. It's his motto." A seventh Dooley book was published in 1910, but given disappointing sales, the publishers abandoned plans for another in 1911. Although Dunne was a strong supporter of Roosevelt in the contentious 1912 presidential election, Mr. Dooley retained his customary above-the-fray attitude, mocking Roosevelt's excited oratory with Dooley feeling there was a large fire somewhere, a mystery solved when he opens the newspaper and learns "much to my relief, that it was not my pants but the Republic that was on fire".
Sickened by the carnage of World War I, and by the growing suspicion and intolerance with which Americans regarded each other, Dunne ended the Dooley series in 1915. The last of the original series of Mr. Dooley was "On Going to See the Doctor", which appeared in the February 1915 Hearst's magazine. Mourned critic Gilbert Seldes, "We needed him badly during the war". Dunne was by then editor of Collier's, but was left unemployed, though with a financial cushion, when the magazine was sold in 1919. He was urged by many to resurrect the Dooley series, but was reluctant, as the publication of the eighth Dooley collection that year, Mr. Dooley on Making a Will and Other Necessary Evils gained only lukewarm sales and reviews; Francis Hackett of The New Republic accused Dunne of "scor[ing] hard and often—on a newspaper target".
It was not until 1922 that Dunne, driven by financial need, began to work on Dooley again, first by shortening old columns for re-syndication, and then, during the 1924 presidential campaign, writing new ones for the newspapers, with Mr. Dooley's tavern transformed by Prohibition into a speakeasy. Beginning early in the year, these appeared on a weekly basis but ended in the final days of the campaign, and conflict with the syndicator when Dunne was unable to produce expected columns put an end to original Mr. Dooley in newspapers. Although prominently featured, these new columns did not generate a great deal of interest. Nevertheless, Dunne was encouraged enough to agree, in 1926, to do a regular Dooley piece for the weekly Liberty magazine. These appeared regularly for six months, and then Dunne ended the arrangement. Ellis speculated that Dunne may no longer have been in financial need, or knew that the pieces were not up to the standards he had earlier set. Dunne's friendship with some of the figures associated with the scandals of the Harding administration, such as Harry Daugherty and Edward Doheny, made it difficult for Mr. Dooley to keep up his pose of disinterested outsider, and Dunne indirectly defended Daugherty in one piece. Dunne's last Mr. Dooley column was "On the Farmer's Woes", appearing in the July 3, 1926 issue.
Soon after the series with Liberty ended, Dunne received a large bequest from his friend Payne Whitney, relieving him of the need to work. Thereafter, Dunne gave up professional writing, with the exception of an infrequent guest editorial or column, and did not write any more Dooley pieces; he died in 1936.
## Language and technique
Over 500 columns and thirty years, Dunne's use of Irish dialect remained fairly consistent. He avoided stereotypically Irish words like begorrah. Among the vowel shifts Dunne used is that from ē (as in the first vowel sound in "easily") to ā (thus, it becomes "aisily"). The word "my" becomes "me" in the mouth of Dooley, and "by" becomes "be", but these are more grammatical distortions than vowel shifts. The letter "y" is often used to begin constructions beginning with multiple vowels, like "-ious" and "-iate", thus they become "-yus" (gloryus) and "-yate" (humilyate) and when added next to consonants or diphthongs can distort the word in a way confusing to the reader (villain becomes villyan; giant becomes joynt). Some of the puns that Dunne made transcend language barriers, as when Dooley renders Émile Zola's famous admonition in the Dreyfus case, J'Accuse...! (I Accuse!), as "jackuse" (jackass). Pronouncing it at Dreyfus's trial gets Zola "thrun ... out" for "a hell of a mane thing to say to anny man".
The authenticity of Dunne's use of dialect was controversial even in his own lifetime. Dunne's partisans claimed that it was genuine Roscommon dialect, phonetically transcribed. But Dunne never called it such, making it clear in the columns that Mr. Dooley had been in America for many years, and so his dialect would have been modified by decades of exposure to an Archey Road wherein was known every way of speaking heard from Armagh to Bantry Bay, and more besides. Dunne was not always consistent in his usages, and spells Dooley's favorite subject, "polytics", "polliticks", "pollytics" and correctly. According to Ellis, while Dunne was no philologist, he had a good ear, and the biographer considered the Dooley pieces the outstanding use of Irish-American dialect in written form. Paul Green, though, in his introduction to the 1988 edition of Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War, averred that scholars in Ireland have stated that Dunne did not capture the dialect, and have written that the Dooley pieces were not popular there. According to Dunne's son Philip, except in a few of the early pieces, Dooley "spoke always as an American, dealing with American and world issues. Eliminate the brogue and the pieces stand out as what they were: pure Americana."
Scholars have differed on the issue of what is to be made of Mr. Dooley and the often bizarre things Dunne placed in his mouth: whether Dooley is intended to believe that he is a cousin of Admiral Dewey, or that "Mack" (as he calls President McKinley) has actually said the seemingly unlikely things that the barkeeper relates. Walter Blair, in his 1942 volume on American humor, considered Mr. Dooley too much of a provincial innocent to grasp that referring to the president so familiarly might be a solecism. Many Dooley pieces commence "I see by the papers", that is, the newspapers Dooley subscribes to for his customers to read and which the bartender peruses at slack times, constituting a major source of information for him. Blair contended that Dooley knows only what he reads in the Evening Post and other papers, and gullibly believes quotations he has heard without attribution from his customer Hogan were made up by that bookish patron. Dunne wrote in 1898 that Dooley "reads the newspapers with solemn care, heartily hates them, and accepts all they print for the sake of drowning Hennessy's rising protests against his logic".
Norris Yates, in his The American Humorist (1964), argued that Dooley is entirely reliant on the papers for information, and has understood them badly. He wrote that Mr. Dooley is intended to be the opposite of the well-informed citizen sought by the Progressive Movement, and that his comments contain more truth than he knows. John O. Rees, in his journal article on Mr. Dooley, suggested that the barkeeper is intended to act in full awareness of how fantastic his words can be; he is expanding on what he has seen in the papers, turning it into a pointed story for the entertainment and edification of Hennessy, and himself. Dooley's apparent misrenderings of the literary quotations Hogan has supposedly regaled him with are, most frequently, too pointed to be mere muddling from the uneducated mind, for example alluding to Gray's Elegy in stating, while discussing high-society gossip, "No one wants to hear what Hogan calls, 'The short and simple scandals of the poor'." Although Mr. Dooley claims not to read books, this is not true as he reviews at least two, Roosevelt's tale of his time in Cuba and Sinclair's The Jungle. Occasionally Hennessy is fooled into believing what Dooley has spoken is literally so, forcing the publican to explain to his customer that what he has said was "a joke. I med it up."
## Legacy and remembrance
For Dunne, the Dooley pieces were a burden, but one that brought him fame and money, neither of which was enough to keep him at his desk once he gained the Whitney legacy. Before he died in 1936, Dunne knew that interest in the Dooley pieces was fading, which saddened him. Understanding that readers were having trouble with the Irish dialect, he experimented with translating the columns into ordinary English, but published none in that form. In 1938, The New Republic noted in an article, "if you try quoting Mr. Dooley's brogue to the average listener you will be rewarded with a look of intense pain. But if you translate Mr. Dooley into ordinary English nearly everything precipitates out as pure wisdom." Ellis, writing in 1941, argued, "that the Dooley essays are journalism of the finest type few will dispute; that they are literature in the more permanent sense may not be so clear. Were the American-Irish brogue of Mr. Dooley still a living and growing language there might be no doubt about it, but Mr. Dooley's language has become at least obsolescent, and that puts the future of the Dooley essay in serious question." Ellis noted that attempts to imitate Dunne's success with other Irish-dialect columns failed, and suggested the brogue was not essential to the originals' popularity, "Dunne's essays lose nothing today when translated into ordinary English words".
Author J. C. Furnas regretted that "a Presidential year always makes Dooleyites feel frustrated. In 1960 we need Mr. Dooley to deal adequately with such things as public-opinion polls; Mr. Truman's opinion of primaries; the spring swarming of the Kennedys in Minnesota; [and] the problem [of] whether Mr. Nixon should invite Checkers back into the act". Writing again in 1991, Furnas suggested potential Dooley targets might include the Bork and Souter confirmation hearings, and the omnipresence of blue jeans; but that an impediment to a revival of interest in Dooley was the present-day view of dialect works as demeaning. English professor John W. Lowe stated that Dooley "set the model for an ethnic spokesman who could be entertaining and informative at the same time using humor to mask a subversive form of humor and get a message across. Then, the Irish made it, and they found his brogue and dialect embarrassing."
Historian Richard Hofstadter deemed Dunne through Dooley "one of [the Progressive Era's] shrewdest commentators". Louis Filler wrote in 1954 that "any lively mention of the Progressive Era is bound to evoke recollections of Dooley, usually in the form of one of his aphorisms". Dunne is closely associated with that era, and worked with several of the muckrakers during the first decade of the 20th century. Scholars have not agreed on the extent to which Dunne through Dooley influenced the era: Ellis believed that the Dooley columns paved the way for public acceptance of the realistic writing of the muckrakers, but Filler disagreed, noting that Dunne's was one of many voices calling for reform in the 1890s. Journalism professor John M. Harrison argued that though Dunne's progressivism, of a non-Marxist sort, placed him at odds with others who urged change, "he was as effective as any writer of his time in keeping before the public mind those issues and questions that were the moving forces in the Progressive movement".
According to Chase Madar in his 2012 article on Dooley, "though Mr. Dooley has been nearly forgotten since the 1930s, in his prime he was the subject of comic strips and pop songs and quoted widely by presidents and Parliaments". As well as the adage about the Supreme Court following the election returns, other Dooleyisms that survived Dunne's time include "politics ain't bean-bag" and that a purpose of newspapers was to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable". In July 2016, Kevin D. Williamson used "politics ain't beanbag" (as he put it) to excuse the failure of unsuccessful contenders for the Republican presidential nomination to fulfill their promises and endorse the winner, Donald Trump.
Contrasting with Dooley's present obscurity is the fame of Dunne's friend Mark Twain. Furnas argued that Dooley was read and accepted by a far wider audience in his time than was Twain, thus rousing "the suspicion that as between the two, Dunne better fitted the notion of a national humorist". Fanning wrote, "Dunne's expansion of the literary uses of the vernacular dialect voice is comparable, though on a smaller scale, to Mark Twain's decision to let Huck Finn tell his own story." According to author and entertainer Max Morath:
> Dunne/Dooley is a missing link in the evolution of American critical thought. The essays were read on an almost weekly basis by millions of Americans during the Progressive Era, the age of Theodore Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan, Thomas Edison and J. P. Morgan. The Frontier was gone; it was a time, we are told, of jingoism and greed, but also of excitement and hope ... We need Finley Peter Dunne for continuity. We need to know that this precocious son of Irish immigrants—those despised bottom-rung unwashed of mid-nineteenth century—somehow developed a voice that was unique and strong, that was heard, that may well have influenced at its outset the very course of the twentieth—the "American"—century.
## Books
- Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War (1898)
- Mr. Dooley in the Hearts of His Countrymen (1899)
- Mr. Dooley's Philosophy (1900)
- Mr. Dooley's Opinions (1901)
- Observations by Mr. Dooley (1902)
- Dissertations by Mr. Dooley (1906)
- Mr. Dooley Says (1910)
- Mr. Dooley on Making a Will and Other Necessary Evils'' (1919)
|
35,243,508 |
The Bread-Winners
| 1,119,834,312 |
1883 novel by John Hay
|
[
"1883 American novels",
"Books about labor history",
"Books by John Hay",
"Novels first published in serial form",
"Works published anonymously"
] |
The Bread-Winners: A Social Study is an 1883 novel by John Hay, former secretary to Abraham Lincoln who in 1898 became U.S. Secretary of State. The book takes an anti-organized labor stance, and when published anonymously sold well and provoked considerable public interest in determining who the author was.
The plot of the book revolves around former army captain Arthur Farnham, a wealthy resident of Buffland (an analog of Cleveland). He organizes Civil War veterans to keep the peace when the Bread-winners, a group of lazy and malcontented workers, call a violent general strike. He is sought in marriage by the ambitious Maud Matchin, daughter of a carpenter, but instead weds a woman of his own class.
Hay wrote his only novel as a reaction to several strikes that affected him and his business interests in the 1870s and early 1880s. Originally published in installments in The Century Magazine, the book attracted wide interest. Hay had left hints to his identity in the novel, and some guessed right, but he never acknowledged the book as his, and it did not appear with his name on it until after his death in 1905. Hay's hostile view of organized labor was soon seen as outdated, and the book is best remembered for its onetime popularity and controversial nature.
## Plot
One of the wealthiest and most cultured residents of the famed Algonquin Avenue in Buffland (a city intended to be Cleveland), Captain Arthur Farnham is a Civil War veteran and widower—his wife died of illness while accompanying him at a remote frontier post. Since he left the army, he has sought to involve himself in municipal affairs but fails through political naiveté. The victorious party has allowed him the position of chairman of the library board. In that capacity, he is approached by Maud Matchin, daughter of carpenter Saul Matchin, a man content with his lot. His daughter is not and seeks employment at the library as a means of bettering herself. Farnham agrees to put her case, but is defeated by a majority on the board, who have their own candidate. She finds herself attracted to Farnham, who is more interested in Alice Belding, daughter of his wealthy widow neighbor.
Saul Matchin had hoped his daughter would become a house servant, but having attended high school, she feels herself too good for that. She is admired by Saul's assistant Sam Sleeny, who lives with the Matchins, a match favored by her father. Sleeny is busy repairing Farnham's outbuildings, and is made jealous by interactions between the captain and Maud. Seeing Sleeny's discontent, Andrew Jackson Offitt (true name Ananias), a locksmith and "professional reformer", tries to get him to join the Bread-winners, a labor organization. Sleeny is happy with his employment, "Old Saul Matchin and me come to an agreement about time and pay, and both of us was suited. Ef he's got his heel into me, I don't feel it," but due to his unhappiness over Maud, is easy game for Offitt, who gets him to join, and to pay the dues that are Offitt's visible means of support.
Maud has become convinced she is in love with Farnham, and declares it to him. It is not reciprocated, and the scene is witnessed both by Mrs. Belding and by Sleeny. The widow believes Farnham when he states he had given Maud no encouragement, but her daughter, when her mother incautiously tells her of the incident, does not. When Farnham seeks to marry Alice, she turns him down and asks him never to renew the subject.
Offitt's membership has tired of endless talk and plans a general strike, a fact of which Farnham is informed by Mr. Temple, a salty-talking vice president of a rolling mill. An element among the strikers also plans to loot houses along Algonquin Avenue, including Farnham's. The strike begins, paralyzing Buffland's commerce, though it is initially nonviolent. Neither the mayor nor the chief of police, when approached by Farnham, are willing to guard Algonquin Avenue. Farnham proceeds to organize Civil War veterans, and purchases weapons to arm them. After Farnham's force rescues the mayor from being attacked, he deputizes them as special police—on condition there is no expense to the city.
Meanwhile, Maud tells her father she will never marry Sleeny. She is wooed by Bott, who is a spiritualist and a Bread-winner, and also by Offitt. Neither meets success, though Offitt dexterously prevents her from actually saying no, and through flattery and stories of his alleged past piques her interest.
By the end of the second day of the strike, which has spread to Buffland's rival city of Clearfield [in the serialization, "Clevealo"], the mood among the laborers has turned ugly. Temple warns that the attacks on Algonquin Avenue are imminent, and aids Farnham's force in turning back assaults on the captain's house and on the Belding residence. Bott and Sleeny are captured by the force; the former is sent to prison but Farnham has pity on Sleeny as a good workman, and the carpenter serves only a few days. The settlement of the strike in Clearfield takes the wind out of the Buffland action, and soon most are back at work, though some agitators are dismissed.
Offitt, despite being one of the leaders of the assault on the Belding house, has escaped blame and befriends the sullen Sleeny on his release. Upon learning that some workers pay their landlord, Farnham, in the evening of the rent day at his home, Offitt comes up with a scheme—rob and murder Farnham and let Sleeny take the blame as Offitt elopes with Maud. Accordingly, Offitt sneaks into Farnham's house with Sleeny's hammer, but just as he is striking the fatal blow, Alice Belding, who can see what is going on from her house through an opera glass, screams, distracting Offitt enough so that Farnham is hurt by the blow, but not killed. Offitt hurries away with the money and proceeds to frame Sleeny. After realizing Offitt's treachery, Sleeny escapes jail and kills him. The stolen money is found on Offitt's body, clearing Sleeny in the assault on Farnham, but the carpenter must still stand trial for the killing of Offitt, in which he is aided by partisan testimony from Maud. A sympathetic jury ignores the law to acquit him. Sleeny wins Maud's hand in marriage, and Farnham and Alice Belding are to be wed.
## Background
### John Hay
John Hay was born in Indiana in 1838, and grew up in frontier Illinois. During his apprenticeship to become a lawyer in his uncle's office in Springfield, he came to know Abraham Lincoln, and worked for his presidential campaign in 1860. He was made Lincoln's assistant personal secretary, and spent the years of the American Civil War working for him; the two men forged a close relationship.
After the war, Hay worked for several years in diplomatic posts abroad, then in 1870 became a writer for Horace Greeley's New-York Tribune, continuing there under Whitelaw Reid after Greeley's death in 1872. Hay was a gifted writer for the Tribune, but also achieved success with literary works. In 1871, he published Pike County Ballads, a group of poems written in the dialect of frontier Pike County, Illinois, where Hay had attended school. The same year, he published Castilian Days, a collection of essays on Spain, some of which had been written while Hay was posted as a diplomat in Madrid.
In 1873, Hay began to woo Clara Stone, daughter of wealthy Cleveland industrialist Amasa Stone, and wed her in 1874. The marriage made Hay wealthy. Hay and his wife moved to Cleveland, where Hay managed Amasa Stone's investments. In December 1876, a train of Stone's Lake Shore Railway was crossing a bridge when the structure collapsed. The Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster, including the subsequent fire, killed 92 people, the worst rail disaster in American history to that point. Stone held the patent for the design of the bridge and was widely blamed; he left Hay in charge of his businesses in mid-1877 as he went to travel in Europe.
Hay biographer Robert Gale recorded that between the publication of the last of Hay's short fiction in 1871 and that of his only novel in 1883, "Hay married money, entered into a lucrative business arrangement in Cleveland with his conservative father-in-law [and] joined the right wing of the Ohio Republican Party ... The Bread-Winners was written by a person made essentially different as a result of these experiences."
### Postwar labor troubles and literary reaction
Although the American Civil War did not itself transform the United States from a largely agrarian to an urban society, it gave great impetus to a change already under way, especially in the North. The challenges of feeding, clothing, and equipping the Union Army caused the building or expansion of many factories and other establishments. This made many wealthy, and led to an industrialized America.
This transformation did not stop when the war ended; industrial production in the United States increased by 75% from 1865 to 1873, making the U.S. second only to Britain in manufacturing output. Railroad construction made practical the exploitation of the trans-Mississippi West. Although the railroads helped fuel an economic boom, they proved a two-edged sword in the 1870s. The 1872 Crédit Mobilier scandal, over graft in the construction of the First transcontinental railroad, shook the Grant administration to its highest levels. Railroad bankruptcies in the Panic of 1873 led to loss of jobs, wage cuts, and business failures. These disturbances culminated in the Railroad Strikes of 1877, when workers struck over cut wages and loss of jobs. The action originally started on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, but spread to other lines, including the Lake Shore, much to Hay's outrage. Federal troops were sent by President Rutherford B. Hayes to quash the strikes, at the cost of more than a hundred civilian lives. The Lake Shore dispute, unlike those elsewhere, was settled without violence. Hay remained angry, and blamed foreign agitators for the dispute. He condemned the "unarmed rebellion of foreign workingmen, mostly Irish" and informed Stone by letter, "the very devil seems to have entered into the lower classes of working men and there are plenty of scoundrels to encourage them to all lengths."
Public opinion was generally against the strikes in the 1877 disputes and called for them to be ended by force to preserve property and stability. The strike and its suppression featured in many books of the period, such as Thomas Stewart Denison's An Iron Crown: A Tale of the Great Republic (1885), with novelists often sympathizing with the demands of the strikers, though decrying their violence. Another labor dispute that likely affected Hay's writing of The Bread-Winners was the Cleveland Rolling Mill strike of June 1882, which occurred just before Hay first submitted his manuscript. During the dispute, union members violently attempted to prevent strikebreakers from entering the mills. A third strike that may have affected the final form of The Bread-Winners was that against Western Union in 1883—Hay was then a director of that corporation.
Gale noted that The Bread-Winners has sometimes been characterized as the first anti-labor novel, but it was preceded by Thomas Bailey Aldrich's The Stillwater Tragedy (1880). Aldrich had little knowledge of workers, and his book was not successful. Nevertheless, The Stillwater Tragedy was one of a very few novels to deal with labor unions at all, prior to Hay's book.
## Themes
Scott Dalrymple, in his journal article on The Bread-Winners, argues, "the brunt of Hay's ire seems aimed less toward these working men themselves than toward troublesome union organizers. Left to their own devices, Hay believes, most laborers are reasonable creatures." Hay biographers Howard L. Kushner and Anne H. Sherrill agree, writing that the author was attempting "to expose the way in which this class, due to its ignorance, fell prey to the villainies of false social reformers". To Hay, unions were dangerous as they manipulate the uneducated worker; it was better for laborers to work out their pay and conditions individually with their employer, as Sleeny does with Matchin. In his journal article, Frederic Jaher notes that Offitt, a self-described reformer, "is arrogant, tyrannical and self-righteous. Hay's message is clear: the established system needs no basic change; eliminate the agitator and harmony returns."
Offitt, at birth, was given the forenames Andrew Jackson, which according to Hay shows that the bearer "is the son of illiterate parents, with no family pride or affections, but filled with a bitter and savage partisanship which found its expression in a servile worship of the most injurious personality in American history". Hay despised President Jackson and Jacksonian democracy, which he deemed corrupt and responsible for continuation of the slave system which Hay saw overthrown at huge cost in the American Civil War. He feared a return to values he deemed anticapitalist, and made the Bread-winners "the laziest and most incapable workmen in town", whose ideals are pre-industrialist and foreign in origin. Hay saw no excuse for violence; as the will of the people could be expressed through the ballot, the remedy for any grievances was the next election. According to Gale, Hay "never loses an opportunity to demean the Irish"—they are depicted as talkative and easily led (Offitt writes for the Irish Harp), and the reader is told that "there was not an Irish laborer in the city but knew his way to his ward club as well as to mass."
Jaher noted that Hay's view of what a worker should be is summed up in the character of Saul Matchin. Although a successful craftsman, he remains within the working class, not seeking to rise above his station, and is content with his lot. His children are not willing to remain within that class, however: the sons run away and the daughters seek to marry well, symbolizing the change being wrought by industrialization. Robert Dunne points out that the working classes are not depicted favorably in Hay's novel, but as "stupid and ill-bred, at the best loyal servants to the gentry and at the worst overly ambitious and a threat to the welfare of Buffland". Sloane considers unfavorable depictions of the working classes inevitable given the plot, and less noticeable than skewed portrayals of the wealthy in other books of the time.
Farnham and Alice Belding are the two characters in the novel who were never part of the working class, but who are scions of wealth, and they are presented favorably. Other, self-made members of the elite are depicted as more vulgar: Mrs. Belding's indulgence in gossip endangers the budding romance between her daughter and Farnham, while Mr. Temple, though brave and steadfast, can discuss only a few topics, such as horse racing, and his speech is described as peppered with profanities. The rest of Buffland's society, as displayed at a party at Temple's house, is composed of "a group of gossipy matrons, vacuous town belles, and silly swains".
## Writing
Hay wrote The Bread-Winners sometime during the winter or spring of 1881–82. At the time, he was busy with his part of the massive Lincoln biography he was compiling with John Nicolay, Abraham Lincoln: A History. His work on the Lincoln project had been delayed by diphtheria and attendant medical treatment, and was further delayed by The Bread-Winners, as once Hay began work on his only novel, he found himself unable to put it aside. The manuscript was completed by June 1882, when he sent it to Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine, though whether he was submitting it for publication or advice is unclear. Gilder called it "a powerful book", but did not immediately offer to publish it in his magazine.
Aside from his family and Gilder, likely the only person who knew that Hay was writing a novel was his friend Henry Adams. In 1880, Adams had published Democracy: An American Novel, anonymously, and when Hay arrived in Britain in July 1882, he found speculation as to its authorship to be a popular pursuit. Hay sent Adams a copy of a cheap British edition, telling him, "I think of writing a novel in a hurry and printing it as by the author of Democracy."
During the summer of 1882, Hay showed the manuscript to his friend, author William Dean Howells. Howells urged Aldrich, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, to publish it. Aldrich agreed, sight unseen, on condition that Hay allow his name to be used as author. Hay was not willing to permit this, and resubmitted the manuscript to Gilder, who agreed to Hay's condition that it be published anonymously. In an anonymous letter to The Century Magazine after the book was published, Hay alleged that he chose not to reveal his name because he was engaged in business where his stature would be diminished if it were known he had written a novel. According to Dalrymple, the likely real reason was that if it were published under Hay's name, it would harm his ambitions for office, for "to attack labor overtly, in print, would not have been politically prudent." Tyler Dennett, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, speculated that Hay would not have been confirmed either as ambassador to Great Britain (1897) or as Secretary of State (1898) had senators associated him with The Bread-Winners.
Although The Bread-Winners was published anonymously, Hay left clues to his identity throughout the novel. Farnham leads the library board, as did Hay's father. Hay's brother Leonard served on the frontier, like Farnham; another brother grew exotic flowers, as does Farnham. Algonquin Avenue, analog of Cleveland's Euclid Avenue (where Hay lived), is home to the novel's protagonist. In the opening chapter, Farnham's study is described in detail and closely resembles Hay's.
## Serialization
In March 1883, the Century Company circulated a postcard, with copies likely sent to newspapers and potential subscribers. Under the heading "Literary Note from The Century Co.", and giving some information about the plot, it announced that an anonymous novel, "unusual in scene and subject, and powerful in treatment" would soon be serialized in the pages of the Century. The serial was originally supposed to begin in April or May, but was postponed because Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel Through One Administration ran long. On July 20, the date of release of the August number, the company placed newspaper advertisements for The Bread-Winners, and said "the story ... abounds in local description and social studies, which heighten the interest and continually pique curiosity as to its authorship." The Bread-Winners appeared in the Century from August 1883 to January 1884, when it was issued as a book by Harper and Brothers.
By July 25, 1883, Cleveland newspapers were taking note of the literary mystery, with initial guesses that the author was some former Clevelander who had moved east. In early August, the New-York Tribune reported that the author was the late Leonard Case, a Cleveland industrialist and philanthropist—the manuscript had supposedly been found among his papers. Few believed the chronically ill and introverted bachelor could have created the vivid portrait of the shapely Maud Matchin. With Case dismissed, speculation turned to other Ohioans, including Cleveland Superintendent of Schools Burke Aaron Hinsdale, former congressman Albert Gallatin Riddle (author of twelve books), and John Hay. The Boston Evening Transcript on August 18 stated, "we have an idea that none of these guesses are correct." Others suggested that the anonymous author of Democracy (Henry Adams's authorship was not yet known) had penned a second controversial work.
The furor fueled sales, with the Century later reporting that it gained 20,000 new subscribers because of the serial. The August issue of the Century, in which the first four chapters were serialized, sold out. The September issue also sold out, but went to a second printing. The Century loudly proclaimed these facts in promotional advertisements, and that it was coining money as a result. As the second installment was read, and the character of Alice Belding became prominent, there was speculation in the press that a female hand had written the novel, with suspicion falling on Constance Fenimore Woolson (great-niece of James Fenimore Cooper), whose novels were set in eastern Ohio. On September 18, the Washington correspondent for the Evening Transcript noted the resemblance of Farnham's study to Hay's. Other candidates for the authorship were Howells (though he quickly denied it) and Hay's friend Clarence King, a writer and explorer.
On October 23, 1883, an interview with Hay, who had just returned from a trip to Colorado, appeared in the pages of the Cleveland Leader. Hay said such a novel would be beyond his powers, and that inaccuracies in the depiction of the local scene suggested to him that it was not written by a Clevelander. He offered no candidates who might have written it. Nevertheless, in November, the Leader ran a column speculating that Hay was the author, based on phrases used both in The Bread-Winners and in Hay's earlier book, Castilian Days, and by the fact that one character in the novel was from Salem, Indiana, Hay's birthplace. Further textual analyses led a number of newspapers in early 1884 (when the novel appeared in book form) to state it had been written by Hay.
Tiring of the guessing game, some newspapers descended to satire. The New Orleans Daily Picayune surveyed the lengthy list of candidates and announced that "the authors of The Bread Winners [sic] will all meet at Chautauqua next summer." Another columnist suggested that a statistic be put in the next census for the number of people named as the author. The appearance of President Arthur's annual message to Congress in December 1883 caused the Rochester Herald to opine that he had written The Bread-Winners "because a careful comparison of his message with the story shows many words common to both". Another Upstate New York paper, the Troy Times, evoked Parson Weems's tales of George Washington: "We cannot tell a lie. We wrote The Bread winners [sic] with our own little hatchet. If any one doubts it, we can show him the hatchet." This admission, the Buffalo Express felt, should put an end to the discussion.
## Reaction
### Critical
The Bread-Winners received some favorable reviews, such as that by GP Lathrop in Atlantic Monthly in May 1884. Lathrop applauded the author's portrayal of the characters, and suggested that Maud Matchin was a notable addition to the "gallery of national types" in American literature. The Century reviewed the book the same month, in an article written by Howells, though he signed it only "W". He saw Maud as "the great discovery of the book" and applauded it as a treatment of an area of American life not previously written about. Similarly, a reviewer for Harper's Magazine liked the parts of the novel set among the lower classes.
According to David E. E. Sloane, "most American critics found it harder to overlook the coarseness of the book and its treatment of the labor problem." A reviewer for Literary World in January 1884 called The Bread-Winners a "greasy, slangy, malodorous book ... repulsive from the very first step." The Dial, the following month, praised the author's use of language but deemed the book "a preposterous tissue of incidents" populated by two sets of "exaggerated types", one vicious, the other absurd. Continent, also in February 1884, suggested that "the criticisms as a whole are severe, and justly so, the book being, with all its brilliancy, faithless and hopeless." The Springfield Republic suggested the author had "no sympathies beyond the circles of wealth and refinement", from which "the workingman is either a murderous ruffian, or a senseless dupe, or a stolid, well-meaning drudge, while the man of wealth is, necessarily, a refined, cultivated hero, handsome, stylish, fascinating." A letter in The Century Magazine deemed the novel "a piece of snobbishness imported from England ... It is simply untruthful ... to continue the assertion that trade unions are mainly controlled and strikes originated by agitators, interested only for what they make out of them."
British critics were generally more favorable toward the book. In a column in the Pall Mall Gazette, The Bread-Winners was seen as "eminently clever and readable, a worthy contribution to that American novel-literature which is at the present day, on the whole, ahead of our own", a statement which Harper's used in advertisements. A reviewer for London's Saturday Review described the book as "one of the strongest and most striking stories of the last ten years".
### Responses
Hay's novel provoked several works in response. Ohio Congressman Martin Foran announced in March 1884 that he would write a book rebutting the author's view of labor, and published it in 1886 under the title The Other Side. Harriet Boomer Barber (writing under the pen name Faith Templeton) kept a number of Hay's characters, while "turning the American industrial world into a sort of Christian utopia" in her Drafted In (1888). Stephen Crane's 1895 short story, "A Christmas Dinner Won in Battle" satirizes The Bread-Winners.
The most successful response was The Money-Makers (1885), published anonymously by Henry Francis Keenan, a former colleague of Hay's at the New-York Tribune. Keenan's work left little doubt that he had fixed on Hay as author of The Bread-Winners, as it contains characters clearly evoking Hay, his family, and associates. Aaron Grimestone parallels Amasa Stone, Hay's father-in-law. When the Academy Opera House collapses, taking hundreds of lives, Grimestone is deemed responsible for its faulty construction—as Stone was for the deaths in the Ashtabula railway disaster. Grimestone eventually commits suicide by shooting himself in his bathroom, as did Stone in 1883. His daughter Eleanor parallels Clara Stone Hay, and Keenan's descriptions of Eleanor make it clear she is, like Clara, heavyset. The character Archibald Hilliard is modeled after Hay, and the description of his appearance is that of Hay even to the mustache. Hilliard was a secretary to a high official in Washington, and later a diplomat and editor, entering journalism in the same year as Hay. Hilliard becomes a brilliant writer at the Atlas, a reforming New York paper like the Tribune, under the editorship of Horatio Blackdaw, that is, Tribune editor Whitelaw Reid. Although she is not physically attractive to him, Hilliard woos Eleanor, convincing himself he is not merely a fortune seeker.
When Hay received a copy of The Money-Makers, according to later accounts, he is said to have hurried to New York to buy up as many copies as he could. He wrote the publisher, William Henry Appleton, complaining about the "savage libel" against Amasa Stone. Appleton agreed to several changes, including the manner of suicide, and undertook not to advertise the book further. Later in 1885, a laudatory biographical sketch of Stone, written by "J.H.", appeared in the Magazine of Western History, attributing Stone's suicide to insomnia. According to Clifford A. Bender in his journal article on the Keenan book, "the principal reason The Money-Makers has remained in obscurity seems to be that John Hay suppressed it," and though he deemed it superior to The Bread-Winners, Dalrymple suggests that Keenan's book "seems more the product of a personal vendetta than an ideological disagreement".
## Publication and aftermath
By the standards of the day, The Bread-Winners was a modest bestseller, with 25,000 copies sold in the United States by mid-1885. Two editions were published in Britain and a pirated edition in Canada, along with a reported sale of 3,000 in the Australian colonies. Translations were published in French, German, and Swedish. By comparison, Adams's Democracy sold only 14,000 copies in the U.S., and took four years to do so. Nevertheless, The Bread-Winners did not compare with the leading bestsellers of the 1880s, such as Lew Wallace's Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880), which sold 290,000 copies by 1888, and Edward Bellamy's story of the future, Looking Backward (1887), which sold nearly 1 million copies in its first decade.
John Hay never acknowledged the book, nor was it attributed to him in his lifetime; as Gilder put it, "guessing right isn't finding out." Hay and Adams amused themselves by suggesting the other might have written it, with Hay writing to his friend, "if you have been guilty of this ... libel upon Cleveland, there is no condonement possible in this or any subsequent worlds." At Hay's death in 1905, obituarists were uncertain whether to assign the novel to him, an exception being The New York Times, which used handwriting analysis to link the book to him, and published it in its entirety over six Sundays later that year. In 1907, with the permission of Clara Hay, the book was officially acknowledged as his, and in 1916 it was republished in John Hay's name, with an introduction by his son, Clarence.
## Historical view
Jaher opined that the book became antiquated as America evolved an understanding of industrial problems, and found Hay's view of labor superficial. Accordingly, the book had little lasting influence, and is remembered only for its onetime popularity and controversy. According to Dalrymple, "the anti-labor novels fail to hold up particularly well. None is a masterpiece of language, plotting, or characterization. Ideologically all seem quite heavy-handed, choosing to make their points with a nearly complete lack of subtlety."
Because of his prominence as a statesman, Hay has had a number of biographers in the century since his death. Sloane suggested that early biographers, aware of the nature of the novel's themes, were defensive in their treatment of it. Lorenzo Sears, for example, who wrote of Hay in 1915, called The Bread-Winners one of several "waifs and strays" of Hay's literary career. Dennett, writing in 1933, deemed the book Hay's honest effort to set forth a problem he could not solve. Other historians were more hostile: Vernon L. Parrington in 1930 called it a "dishonest book" and "a grotesque fabric smeared with unctuous morality". More recently, Gale (writing in 1978) described it as "a timely, popular and controversial novel that still rewards the sympathetic reader", while Hay's most recent biographer, John Taliaferro (2013) deemed it "certainly no love letter to [Cleveland]".
|
629,760 |
Lanny McDonald
| 1,171,427,098 |
Canadian ice hockey player (b. 1953)
|
[
"1953 births",
"Alberta Sports Hall of Fame inductees",
"Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy winners",
"Calgary Centennials players",
"Calgary Flames captains",
"Calgary Flames players",
"Canadian ice hockey right wingers",
"Canadian people of Scottish descent",
"Cleveland Crusaders draft picks",
"Colorado Rockies (NHL) players",
"Hockey Hall of Fame inductees",
"Ice hockey people from Alberta",
"King Clancy Memorial Trophy winners",
"Living people",
"Medicine Hat Tigers players",
"National Hockey League All-Stars",
"National Hockey League first-round draft picks",
"National Hockey League players with retired numbers",
"Order of Hockey in Canada recipients",
"People from Flathead County, Montana",
"People from Special Areas, Alberta",
"Stanley Cup champions",
"Toronto Maple Leafs draft picks",
"Toronto Maple Leafs players"
] |
Lanny King McDonald (born February 16, 1953) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Colorado Rockies and Calgary Flames of the National Hockey League (NHL). He played over 1,100 games during a 16-year career in which he scored 500 goals and over 1,000 points. His total of 66 goals in 1982–83 remains the Flames' franchise record for a single season.
McDonald was selected by the Maple Leafs as the fourth overall pick in the 1973 NHL Amateur Draft and established himself as an offensive forward with three consecutive 40-goal seasons in Toronto in the mid-1970s. His trade to the Rockies in 1979 resulted in Toronto fans protesting the deal in front of Maple Leaf Gardens. He played parts of three seasons in Denver, before he was sent to Calgary in 1981 where he spent the remainder of his career. He co-captained the Flames to a Stanley Cup championship in his final season of 1988–89.
McDonald is among the most popular players in Flames history and his personality and bushy red moustache made him an iconic figure within the sport. McDonald won the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy for dedication and sportsmanship in 1983 and in 1988 was named the inaugural winner of the King Clancy Memorial Trophy for his leadership and humanitarian presence, in particular through his long association with the Special Olympics.
Internationally, McDonald represented Team Canada as a player on two occasions and in a management role three times. His assist created the tournament winning overtime goal of the inaugural 1976 Canada Cup, and he was director of player personnel of Canada's 2004 World Championship winning team.
The Flames retired McDonald's uniform number 9 in 1990. McDonald was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1992, the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame in 1993 and Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 2017. In 2015, he was named chairman of the board of the Hockey Hall of Fame, after serving nine years on the Hall's selection committee. He was named to the Order of Hockey in Canada in 2022.
## Early life
McDonald was born February 16, 1953, in Hanna, Alberta. He is the youngest of four children after brother Lynn and sisters Donna and Dixie. His father, Lorne, tended the family farm near the hamlet of Craigmyle, 35 kilometres (22 mi) outside Hanna. The young Lanny viewed his father as his hero, often following Lorne around helping with whatever chores he could. McDonald credits his father for teaching him the value of honesty and hard work. His mother, Phyllis, was a full-time teacher who was frequently involved with community events.
Learning to skate at the age of five, McDonald immediately developed a passion for hockey. He served as a stick boy, helping manage equipment, for his father's community team and grew up listening to the famous Foster Hewitt radio broadcasts of Hockey Night in Canada. McDonald shared his father's passion for the Toronto Maple Leafs; he was given his middle name, King, after Maple Leafs' star King Clancy. He began playing organized hockey at the age of six and, despite both having full-time commitments, his parents drove him and Lynn to Hanna for their practices and games. McDonald recalled that half of his time in youth hockey was spent in Hanna, and the other half in the car. He completed high school while playing in Lethbridge, choosing to remain with his junior A team in 1970–71 rather than join the Medicine Hat Tigers of the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL) so that he could complete his diploma.
## Playing career
### Junior
McDonald began his junior career in 1969 with the Lethbridge Sugar Kings of the tier II Alberta Junior Hockey League (AJHL). He appeared in 34 games for the Sugar Kings as a 16-year-old, scoring two goals. The following season, 1970–71, he emerged as a leading scorer, recording 37 goals and 82 points in 45 games. He was voted the league's most valuable player and named to the second All-Star team. Additionally, McDonald appeared in six WCHL games with the Calgary Centennials.
The Medicine Hat Tigers acquired McDonald's playing rights in a trade during the 1970–71 WCHL season. He joined the team the following year, finishing eighth in league scoring with 114 points, including 50 goals. He improved to 62 goals and 139 points in 1972–73 to finish third overall in league scoring and was named to the WCHL All-Star team at forward. McDonald added 37 points in the playoffs as the Tigers won the league championship.
In McDonald's draft year of 1973, the National Hockey League (NHL) was in competition with the rival World Hockey Association (WHA) for talent. McDonald was considered a top junior prospect and was recruited by both leagues. The Vancouver Canucks had the third overall selection in the NHL draft and were interested in drafting him, but opted against it when McDonald made it clear he would likely go to the WHA rather than play with Vancouver. Instead, he went to the Toronto Maple Leafs with the fourth overall pick. In the WHA draft, he was selected 10th overall by the Cleveland Crusaders. McDonald chose to play in the NHL, signing a contract with the Maple Leafs that was considered to be among the richest in the league. The deal, worth between \$175,000 and \$200,000 per season, came as a result of the competition between the two leagues and McDonald found that some of the older players in Toronto resented him as a result.
### Toronto Maple Leafs
McDonald made his NHL debut with the Leafs on October 10, 1973, against the Buffalo Sabres. He assisted on two goals in the game, but also suffered a concussion immediatley after the opening face off and required several stitches after landing on his head as a result of a check by Rick Martin. When McDonald returned to the ice sheet he put on his Winwell style helmet that he had worn as a Medicine Hat Tiger, which he wore for the rest of his career. All told he went helmetless for approximately 2.8 seconds as a professional. It was the only time in his career he did so, as he felt that his injury contributed to his early struggles in the NHL. McDonald scored his first NHL goal on October 17 against Michel Larocque of the Montreal Canadiens, but finished the season with only 14 goals and 30 points in 1973–74. His continued inability to score early in the 1974–75 season nearly resulted in a trade. Atlanta Flames general manager Cliff Fletcher sought to take advantage of the Maple Leafs' early disappointment in McDonald and agreed in principle to a trade for the young forward in exchange for Curt Bennett. However, McDonald scored three goals in his following two games causing Toronto to back out of the deal. McDonald recorded a modest improvement over his rookie campaign: 17 goals and 44 points.
The patience the Maple Leafs had shown McDonald in his first two seasons was rewarded in 1975–76 when he rediscovered his offensive touch, scoring 37 goals and adding 56 assists. Following the season, he earned an invite to the Canadian national team's summer camp in advance of the 1976 Canada Cup. McDonald was named to the roster, and appeared in five of Team Canada's seven games. He recorded two assists in the tournament, one of which came on Darryl Sittler's overtime goal that clinched the inaugural Canada Cup championship.
A 43-goal season in 1976–77 earned McDonald several accolades. He was named to the Wales Conference team at the 1977 All-Star Game where he scored two goals in a 4–3 victory over the Campbell Conference. He was also named a second team All-Star at right wing following the season. It was the first of three consecutive 40-goal seasons for McDonald, and he finished in the top ten in NHL scoring in both 1977–78 and 1978–79. He appeared in his second All-Star Game in 1978 and played for the NHL All-Stars in the 1979 Challenge Cup against the Soviet national team.
The highlight of McDonald's career in Toronto came in the 1978 Stanley Cup playoffs against the New York Islanders. The Maple Leafs were viewed as underdogs in the series against an Islanders team that was considered to be among the best in the league. Toronto overcame a 2–0 series deficit to force a seventh and deciding game. Playing despite breaking both his wrist and nose during the series, McDonald scored the overtime winning goal that eliminated the Islanders and allowed the Maple Leafs to advance to the league semi-finals for the first time in 11 years. Toronto was then eliminated by Montreal, who swept the series with four consecutive victories.
### Colorado Rockies
Punch Imlach was named Toronto general manager prior to the 1979–80 season and immediately clashed with team captain Darryl Sittler. Imlach wanted to move Sittler to another team, but the player refused to waive his no-trade clause. Imlach responded by trading teammates friendly to Sittler instead. On December 28, 1979, Imlach dealt McDonald to the Colorado Rockies, along with Joel Quenneville, in exchange for Wilf Paiement and Pat Hickey. The deal came as a surprise even to Toronto's head coach.
McDonald was devastated by the trade, particularly because he and his wife were expecting their second child and had just purchased a new house. In his 1987 autobiography, he argued that Imlach made the trade out of spite. McDonald had also come into conflict with Imlach while serving as the team's representative of the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) when the general manager refused to honour an increase in the per diem paid to each player. The trade outraged fans in Toronto, where McDonald was among the team's most popular players. While fans picketed outside Maple Leaf Gardens in protest, McDonald told the media that he felt fortunate to have been traded away from the unsettled situation the Leafs were in and blamed Imlach for the team's failures on the ice. Sittler resigned as the team's captain following the trade.
Arriving in Colorado, McDonald found himself at the centre of another power struggle. Sympathetic to the fact that his wife was less than two weeks away from giving birth, head coach Don Cherry gave McDonald permission to leave the team on off-days to return to his wife in Toronto. But he did so without gaining the approval of general manager Ray Miron, who disagreed frequently with Cherry and fired him following the season. On the ice, McDonald scored 35 goals with the Rockies and finished with a total of 40 between the two teams.
Rumours circulated following the season that Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard had told the media that he was attempting to reacquire McDonald. The Rockies disputed that any such negotiations had taken place and Ballard quickly apologized for the news story after Colorado threatened to file tampering charges against the Maple Leafs' owner. McDonald served as the Rockies' captain, and scored 35 goals and 81 points in 1980–81, his only full season with the team.
### Calgary Flames
Stating that his team needed to add character and leadership, Cliff Fletcher finally completed a trade for McDonald seven years after his first attempt. McDonald was acquired by the Calgary Flames, along with a draft pick, in exchange for Bob MacMillan and Don Lever on November 25, 1981. The deal occurred one day after the last place Rockies lost to the Flames by a 9–2 score. Once the team's plane landed in Winnipeg, McDonald was informed of the trade and told to return to Calgary. Angered at first, he viewed the deal as an insult, that the worst team in the NHL had rejected him.
McDonald also felt the pressure of having to replace two popular ex-Flames in MacMillan and Lever while also working to overcome a separated shoulder he suffered earlier in the year with the Rockies. He made his debut with the Flames the following night, a 7–1 victory over the Los Angeles Kings, after which McDonald remarked that it was the most fun he had playing the game in a long time. He was given a loud ovation by the fans who immediately embraced him as a local hero, even though it took him seven games before he scored his first goal as a member of the Flames. He scored 34 goals in Calgary, and combined with the 6 scored in Colorado, finished with his fifth 40-goal campaign in six years.
The 1982–83 season was dominated by McDonald's battle with Wayne Gretzky of the Edmonton Oilers for the league lead in goals. Amidst the best offensive season of his career, McDonald scored a hat trick against Pittsburgh to give him 47 goals at the mid-season break for the 1983 All-Star Game, a total that tied his career high. He was named to the starting lineup for the All-Star Game and was the league's leading goal scorer at that point, two ahead of Gretzky. McDonald finished with 66 goals, five short of Gretzky's 71. At that time, only Gretzky, Mike Bossy and Phil Esposito had ever scored more goals in one NHL season. McDonald was named to the second All-Star team for the second time in his career and was voted the winner of the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, given to the player who "best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey". His 66 goals remains a Flames' single season record.
Following the trade of Phil Russell in the summer of 1983, McDonald and Doug Risebrough were named co-captains for the 1983–84 season. They were joined by Jim Peplinski the following season. McDonald missed 15 games due to injuries which reduced his scoring to 33 goals and 66 points, but he played in his fourth All-Star Game. He scored the first Flames goal in the Olympic Saddledome, on the building's opening night of October 15, 1983.
McDonald became the 21st player in NHL history to score 400 career goals, reaching the mark in a 7–4 loss in Los Angeles on December 21, 1983. He was initially credited with scoring the milestone goal in his previous game, against the Winnipeg Jets, but after reviewing a replay of the goal himself, McDonald asked the league to credit it to teammate Eddy Beers who had deflected his shot. His injury problems worsened in 1984–85 as he missed the start of the season with pulled muscles and was limited to just 43 games.
As the 1985–86 season approached, McDonald endured questions about whether he was reaching the point where age and injuries meant he could no longer be an effective NHL player. Hoping to prove himself, he set a goal of playing all 80 games for the Flames. He succeeded, and scored 28 goals and 71 points in the process, despite dislocating his thumb in the preseason and suffering minor knee and hip injuries during the course of the year. He later said it was a matter of pride to him not to miss a game. In the playoffs, McDonald was witness to one of the most infamous mistakes in NHL history. With the score tied at two in the seventh game of the Smythe Division final against Edmonton, McDonald chased Oilers' rookie Steve Smith around the Edmonton net. Smith attempted to pass the puck forward, but inadvertently hit the back of goaltender Grant Fuhr's skate, deflecting the puck into his own net.
It turned out to be the winning goal for Calgary who eliminated Edmonton to clinch the Smythe Division championship. The victory over their provincial rivals also touched off a celebration amongst the fans, of which over 20,000 greeted the team with wild cheering when their plane landed at Calgary International Airport. A series win over the St. Louis Blues led McDonald and the Flames into their first Stanley Cup Finals, against Montreal. The series ended in disappointment: He watched from the bench as his teammates unsuccessfully attempted to tie the deciding game in the final minute and the Canadiens defeated the Flames in five games to win the Stanley Cup.
Two separate knee injuries limited McDonald in 1986–87. His total of 14 goals in 58 games was his fewest since his rookie season. He reached a milestone in the Flames' final game of the season, appearing in the 1,000th game of his career. Following a 10-goal campaign in 60 games in 1987–88, McDonald reached two additional major milestones in the 1988–89 season. On March 7, 1989, he scored the 1,000th point of his career with a wraparound goal from behind the net against Bob Essensa in a 9–5 victory against the Winnipeg Jets. Two weeks later, on March 21, he scored the 500th goal of his career on a nearly identical wraparound against Mark Fitzpatrick of the New York Islanders. It was the final regular season goal of McDonald's career.
At 36 years old and approaching the end of his career, the 1989 Stanley Cup playoffs was potentially his last chance at winning the Stanley Cup. The Flames defeated the Vancouver Canucks, Los Angeles Kings and Chicago Blackhawks to set up a Stanley Cup Finals rematch of the 1986 Stanley Cup Finals with the Montreal Canadiens. McDonald was left out of the Flames' lineup for the third, fourth and fifth games, but with Calgary leading the series three wins to two, head coach Terry Crisp felt that if the Flames were to win the championship, McDonald deserved to be in the game. Crisp's decision paid dividends, as midway through the sixth game, McDonald stepped onto the ice after serving a penalty to join Håkan Loob and Joe Nieuwendyk in a three-on-one rush toward the Montreal goal. Loob passed the puck up to Nieuwendyk, who saw a streaking McDonald coming up the right side of the ice. McDonald received the pass then shot the puck over Montreal goaltender Patrick Roy's glove to give the Flames a 2–1 lead. Doug Gilmour added two goals, and Calgary won the game 4–2 to earn the franchise's first Stanley Cup championship. League president John Ziegler presented the trophy to McDonald, co-captain Jim Peplinski and alternate Tim Hunter. Wearing the captain's "C" for the game, McDonald was the first member of the Flames to carry the trophy as the team paraded it around the Forum in celebration.
## Management career
McDonald announced his retirement as a player on August 28, 1989, stating in a press conference that he made the determination before the 1988–89 season began that it would be his last. He also revealed that he had received an offer from another, unnamed, team to play in 1989–90 but felt that it was the right time to end his career. The Flames made McDonald their vice president in charge of corporate and community affairs. He chose the corporate position partly due to a fascination with the business world, and partly to remain close to his family as a role in hockey operations would have necessitated more travel. His interest in business grew following his trade to Calgary as he was featured in numerous commercials and signed endorsements throughout southern Alberta. He had also previously served as a vice president of the NHLPA in the early 1980s. McDonald changed roles in 1992 as he was named the team's Vice President of Marketing. After serving four years in that position, McDonald became the Vice President of Corporate Development in 1996.
McDonald was part of a committee tasked with hiring a new management team in June 2000. The media speculated that after several years in a corporate position, he hoped to land a role as a vice president within hockey operations. He received no such role, and two months after the hiring of Craig Button as executive vice president and general manager of the Flames, McDonald announced he was leaving the organization. McDonald denied claims from team sources that he was upset at not gaining a new role when Button was hired. He stated that after "nineteen great years here in one organization", it was the right time to retire. He retained a small role in the organization, serving as a board member of the Saddledome Foundation.
Ken King, newly hired president of the Flames, lured McDonald back into the organization a year later by naming him an executive assistant to hockey operations. McDonald held the position until 2003. He also served in hockey operations roles with Hockey Canada. McDonald was the general manager of Team Canada for the 2001 and 2002 World Championships. He returned in 2004 in a role as director of player personnel of Canada's gold medal-winning squad.
## Playing style
McDonald was known primarily as an offensive player with a hard shot. His wrist shot was considered to be effective, and his scoring exploits in junior hockey earned him the nickname "Machine-Gun Lanny". Red Kelly, McDonald's coach in his first NHL seasons, recalled that he was impressed with his young player's skill handling the puck and defended McDonald against critics who wanted him moved out of Toronto due to his early struggles. In his NHL career, McDonald led his team in goal scoring six times: 1976–77, 1977–78 and 1978–79 with Toronto, 1980–81 with Colorado, and 1981–82 and 1982–83 in Calgary. He was also a physical player, willing to play a hard-hitting style in the corners.
As age and injuries took their toll, McDonald's role with the Flames changed. His playing time decreased in his later years as he was no longer counted on to be the team's primary offensive threat. Often left out of the lineup in his final season, McDonald was expected to provide a boost to the team when he drew into the lineup. He was counted on to provide a veteran presence and to act as a mentor for the team's younger players.
## Legacy
The Flames arrived in Calgary after relocating from Atlanta for the 1980–81 season. The organization entered a transitional phase, as many players used to the warm weather and relaxed atmosphere of Atlanta were unable or unwilling to adapt to the higher expectations fans in Calgary placed on them. David Poile, then Flames assistant general manager, stated that the team had an identity crisis as a result. It was in this atmosphere that general manager Cliff Fletcher made the trade for McDonald on November 25, 1981, claiming that McDonald added two characteristics the Flames lacked: character and leadership.
McDonald's arrival in Calgary was considered a turning point for the organization, one where his personality, demeanor and on-ice play came to define the Flames in the 1980s. Poile argued that it signalled the true beginning of the team in its new market: "The trade for Lanny McDonald was the start of the Calgary Flames franchise. It gave us that Calgary identity, that Western Canadian flavor." Columnist and co-author of McDonald's autobiography, Steve Simmons, agreed. He added that the personal and professional disappointments McDonald endured in Toronto and Colorado resulted in his gaining a greater appreciation of both the game and himself. McDonald was extremely popular with his teammates and the fans wherever he played, as well as with the media – he was named Colorado's athlete of the year in 1980 by the state's sportswriters.
Renowned for his leadership ability, McDonald cultivated the respect of the team's younger players. He came into the NHL at a time when the battle with the rival WHA for talent led to rookies signing for far more money than the previous generation of players commanded. Consequently, McDonald faced the resentment of several of Toronto's veteran players and resolved to show greater respect to those that followed him. His efforts left a lasting impression on his peers; among them was Tiger Williams who called McDonald "a great ambassador" for the NHL.
The Flames made McDonald the first player in franchise history to have his jersey retired when they raised his number 9 to the rafters of the Olympic Saddledome in a ceremony on March 17, 1990. As part of its 1992 class, he was also the first former Flame to gain induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame. One year later he was inducted into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame. McDonald's image endured well into retirement; in 2008, he was the only athlete named in a list of Alberta's ten greatest citizens compiled by the Calgary Herald. In 2017, McDonald was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame.
McDonald was named to the Order of Hockey in Canada in 2022.
## Personal life
McDonald met his wife Ardell while playing junior hockey for the Medicine Hat Tigers. They were married in 1975, and have four children: daughters Andra and Leah, and sons Barrett and Graham. The family settled in Calgary after McDonald's trade to the Flames. They also maintain a summer home in Montana, where the family has invested in restaurants and a craft brewery in the community of Lakeside. Co-owned by Andra, the brewery considers McDonald its inspiration, and produces "Old 'Stache Porter" in his honour.
His giant, walrus-style moustache is McDonald's most defining physical characteristic and helped him become an iconic figure in the sport. He developed it in 1974, spending the summer seeing what kind of beard he could grow. Knowing that the Maple Leafs did not allow players to maintain beards at the time, he settled on what he described as a "normal moustache" once he returned to Toronto. Some time later, he was inspired by baseball player Sparky Lyle's moustache and chose to grow one in a similar style. It became a symbol for the Flames as some fans took to wearing fake red moustaches during playoff runs. Razor manufacturers offered endorsements if he would shave it, which he refused.
Among his charitable and humanitarian efforts, McDonald is best known for his participation with the Special Olympics. He first became involved with the organization in 1974 when the Maple Leafs asked him to represent the team at the Special Olympics Summer Games. The event began a decades long association for McDonald. He was the honorary coach of the 1986 Special Olympics Summer Games in Calgary, and served as a head coach for the Canadian Special Olympics floor hockey team. In 1988, McDonald's contributions to the Special Olympics as a coach and co-chairman of the organization's fundraising efforts, as well as his work with the Alberta Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, were recognized by the NHL as he was named the inaugural recipient of the King Clancy Memorial Trophy. The award is given to the hockey player who best exemplifies leadership on the ice with humanitarian contributions off of it. McDonald was previously honoured by the Flames as the first winner of the Ralph T. Scurfield Humanitarian Award in 1987, which he won again in 1989.
McDonald's autobiography, Lanny, co-written by Steve Simmons, was published in 1987. A Canadian best-seller, it was an unexpected success for publisher McGraw-Hill. The book sold 10,000 copies in its first couple months of publication, for which the publisher made a donation of \$10,000 to the Special Olympics. In 2008, McDonald was given an honorary doctorate from the University of Calgary.
## Career statistics
### Regular season and playoffs
### International
## Awards and honours
## See also
- List of members of the Hockey Hall of Fame
|
3,016,271 |
Italian War of 1521–1526
| 1,171,326,687 |
Military conflict between France and the Habsburgs
|
[
"1520s conflicts",
"1520s in France",
"1520s in Italy",
"1520s in the Holy Roman Empire",
"1520s in the Papal States",
"1521 in Italy",
"1521 in the Holy Roman Empire",
"1521 in the Papal States",
"1526 in Italy",
"1526 in the Holy Roman Empire",
"1526 in the Papal States",
"16th-century military history of France",
"16th-century military history of Spain",
"16th-century military history of the Kingdom of England",
"Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor",
"Francis I of France",
"Italian War of 1521–1526",
"Italian Wars",
"Wars involving England",
"Wars involving France",
"Wars involving Spain",
"Wars involving the Holy Roman Empire",
"Wars involving the Papal States",
"Wars involving the Republic of Venice"
] |
The Italian War of 1521–1526, sometimes known as the Four Years' War, (French: Sixième guerre d'Italie) was a part of the Italian Wars. The war pitted Francis I of France and the Republic of Venice against the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Henry VIII of England, and the Papal States. It arose from animosity over the election of Charles as Emperor in 1519–1520 and from Pope Leo X's need to ally with Charles against Martin Luther.
The war broke out across Western Europe late in 1521, when a French–Navarrese expedition attempted to reconquer Navarre while a French army invaded the Low Countries. A Spanish army drove the Navarrese forces back into the Pyrenees, and other Imperial forces attacked northern France, where they were stopped in turn.
In 1521 Charles V and Henry VIII signed the Treaty of Bruges in secret against France, and hostilities resumed on the Italian Peninsula. At the Battle of Bicocca on 27 April 1522, Imperial and Papal forces defeated the French, driving them from Lombardy. Following the battle, fighting again spilled onto French soil, while Venice made a separate peace. The English invaded France in 1523, while the French military leader Charles de Bourbon, alienated by Francis's attempts to seize his inheritance, betrayed Francis and allied himself with the Emperor. The failure of a French attempt to regain Lombardy in 1524 provided Bourbon with an opportunity to invade Provence at the head of a Spanish army.
Francis led a second attack on Milan in 1525. His disastrous defeat at the Battle of Pavia, where he was captured by the Imperial captain Charles de Lannoy and many of his chief nobles were killed, led to the end of the war. Francis was imprisoned in the Lombard city of Pizzighettone and then in Madrid. Diplomatic maneuvers to obtain his release included a French mission sent by his mother, Louise of Savoy, to the court of Suleiman the Magnificent that resulted in an Ottoman ultimatum to Charles. This unprecedented alignment between Christian and Muslim monarchs caused a scandal in the Christian world, and laid the foundation for the Franco-Ottoman alliance. Suleiman invaded Hungary in the summer of 1526, defeating Charles' allies at the Battle of Mohács. Despite these efforts, Francis signed the Treaty of Madrid, surrendering his claims to Italy, Artois, Flanders, and Burgundy. A few weeks after his release, he repudiated the terms of the treaty, starting the War of the League of Cognac. The Italian Wars continued for another three decades, ending with France having failed to regain any substantial territories in Italy.
## Prelude
Following the Treaty of London (1518), the major European powers (France, England, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire) were outwardly friendly towards each other. The treaty pledged them all to come to the aid of any signatory that was attacked, and to unite against any state that broke the peace. They were divided on the question of the Imperial succession; the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I—intending for a Habsburg to succeed him—campaigned throughout 1518 on behalf of his grandson Charles I of Spain, while Francis I of France put himself forward as an alternate candidate. The Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire were forced to cooperate in dealing with the rising influence of Martin Luther, who found support among some Imperial nobles when he opened the way for them to assume authority over their local churches. At the same time, Francis was faced with Henry's able, efficient and intelligent chief advisor Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the "power behind the throne" who interposed himself into the quarrels of the continent in an attempt to increase both England's influence and his own.
Maximilian's death on 12 January 1519 brought the Imperial election to the forefront of European politics. Pope Leo X, threatened by the presence of Spanish troops 64 kilometres (40 mi) from the Vatican, supported the French candidacy. The election was not a foregone conclusion; with the exception of Frederick of Saxony and Joachim I of Brandenburg, all the electors accepted large bribes from Charles to obtain their votes. Maximilian had already promised sums of 500,000 florins to the prince-electors in exchange for their votes, but Francis offered up to three million florins, and Charles retaliated by borrowing vast sums from the Fugger banking family. The prince-electors all eventually voted for Charles, and he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor on 23 October 1520, by which point he already controlled both the Spanish crown and the hereditary Burgundian lands in the Low Countries.
During the autumn of 1521, the English became involved in arbitrating between Spain and France. Henry entertained the emperor in Kent for three days, in a meeting that achieved little, although the Treaty of Windsor (16 June 1522) reaffirmed the alliance between England and Aragon. Henry and Francis staged an extravagant meeting at the Field of the Cloth of Gold throughout June 1520. The following month, Henry sought an agreement with Charles at Gravelines.
Charles was crowned King of the Romans at Aachen in October 1520, but not Holy Roman Emperor, which could only happen if he was crowned by the pope in Rome. To divert Charles—and his army—from entering and possibly taking control of Italy, Francis sought to wage war on the emperor by proxy, and made plans for simultaneous incursions into German and Spanish territory. Luxembourg was attacked under the leadership of Robert de la Marck, whilst a French-Navarrese army simultaneously advanced through Navarre after reconquering St-Jean-Pied-de-Port. The expedition was nominally led by the 18-year-old Navarrese king Henry d'Albret, whose kingdom had been invaded by Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1512, but the army was effectively commanded by André de Foix and funded and equipped by the French. The French plans proved to be flawed, as the intervention of Henry of Nassau drove back the Luxembourg offensive; and although de Foix was initially successful in seizing Pamplona, he was driven from Navarre after being defeated at the Battle of Esquiroz on 30 June 1521.
Charles was meanwhile preoccupied with the issue of Luther, whom he confronted at the Diet of Worms in April 1521. Pope Leo X was unwilling to tolerate open defiance of his own authority, and considered the Emperor as a potential ally to support him against Luther, whose backers included Frederick of Saxony. In May 1521, Charles proclaimed the Edict of Worms against Luther, whilst also aiding the Pope in the return of Parma and Piacenza to Italian authority. Leo, needing the Imperial mandate for his campaign against what he viewed as a dangerous heresy, promised to assist in expelling the French from Lombardy, leaving Francis with only the Republic of Venice for an ally.
## Initial moves (June 1521 – May 1522)
On 20 August 1521, the Imperial army under Henry of Nassau invaded northeastern France—an attack made in response to de Marck’s attack on Luxembourg. Ardres was overrun, Mouzon was severely damaged after being besieged, and Aubenton was sacked and its inhabitants massacred. The attackers were delayed during the three-week siege of Mézières by the resistance of the French, led by Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard. Francis had time to raise a large army at Reims for relieving Mézières. The town was resupplied a few days before the king's army arrived at the town on 26 September, which was by then largely destroyed. Nassau was forced to withdraw, laying waste to towns along his route of his retreat.
Tournai, which had been returned to France by Henry VIII in February 1519 as part of the terms of the Treaty of London, was besieged by Imperial forces. Tournai was left to surrender to the besiegers after Francis's army was ordered to retreat, and later disbanded.
A Franco-Navarrese force approached the fortress of Amaiur (Baztan, Navarre), laying siege to the fortress the Castilians had just reinforced. On 3 October 1521 the Castilians capitulated in exchange for free passage to Castile. The troops of Guillaume Gouffier then headed to Labourd and on to Behobia, capturing the fortress of Urantzu. Fuenterrabia, at the mouth of the river Bidasoa on the Franco-Spanish border, was captured later in the month by French-Navarrese troops under Bonnivet and Claude of Lorraine. The French held this advantageous foothold in northern Spain until March 1524.
On 28 November 1521 Charles V and Henry VIII signed in secret the Treaty of Bruges. Odet de Foix, Vicomte de Lautrec, the French governor of Milan, was tasked with resisting the Imperial and Papal forces. Lautrec was outmatched by Prospero Colonna, and by late November 1521 had been forced out of Milan and had retreated to located towns around the river Adda. Lautrec's army was reinforced by Swiss mercenaries. Unable to pay them, he had to give in to their demands to engage the Imperial forces immediately.
On 27 April 1522, Lautrec attacked Colonna's combined Imperial and Papal army near Milan at the Battle of Bicocca. Lautrec had planned to use his superiority in artillery to his advantage, but the Swiss, impatient to engage the enemy, masked his guns and charged against the entrenched Spanish arquebusiers. In the resulting melee, the Swiss were badly mauled by the Spanish and by a force of landsknechts (Germanic mercenaries). Their morale broken, the Swiss returned to their cantons; Lombardy was abandoned. Colonna and d'Avalos, left unopposed, proceeded to besiege Genoa, capturing the city on 30 May.
## France at bay
The loss of Lombardy was followed by England entering openly into the conflict, when on 29 May 1522, the English formally declared war on France. Henry VIII and Charles signed the Treaty of Windsor on 16 June 1522. The treaty outlined a joint English-Imperial attack against France. Charles agreed to compensate England for the pensions that would be lost because of conflict with France and to pay the past debts that would be forfeit; to seal the alliance, he also agreed to marry Henry's only daughter, Mary. In July, the English raided Morlaix and in September an English army marched from Calais, burning and looting the countryside in an unsuccessful attempt to engage the French in battle.
To raise money, Francis pursued a lawsuit against Charles III, Duke of Bourbon, who had received the majority of his holdings through his marriage to Suzanne, Duchess of Bourbon. After Suzanne's death, Louise of Savoy, her sister and the king's mother, insisted that the territories in question should pass to her because of her closer kinship to the deceased. Francis was confident that seizing the disputed lands would improve his own financial position sufficiently to continue the war and began to confiscate portions of them in Louise's name. Bourbon, angered by this treatment and increasingly isolated at court, sought redress by making overtures to Charles V.
The death of Doge Antonio Grimani brought Andrea Gritti, a veteran of the War of the League of Cambrai, to power in Venice. He quickly began negotiations with the Emperor and on 29 July 1523 concluded the Treaty of Worms, which removed the Republic from the war. Bourbon continued his scheming with Charles, offering to begin a rebellion against Francis in exchange for money and German troops. When Francis, who was aware of the plot, summoned him to Lyon in October, he feigned illness and failed to appear. Francis ordered as many of Bourbon's associates as could be captured to be brought to justice after the Duke reached Imperial territory and openly entered the Emperor's service.
Charles then invaded southern France over the Pyrenees. Lautrec successfully defended Bayonne against the Spanish, but Charles was able to recapture Fuenterrabia in February 1524. On 19 September 1523, an English army under the Duke of Suffolk advanced into Picardy from Calais. The French, stretched thin by the Imperial attack, were unable to resist, and Suffolk soon advanced past the Somme, devastating the countryside in his wake and stopping only 80 kilometres (50 mi) from Paris. When Charles failed to support the English offensive, Suffolk—unwilling to risk an attack on the French capital—turned away from Paris on 30 October, returning to Calais by mid-December.
Francis now turned his attention to Lombardy. In September 1523, a French army under Bonnivet advanced through the Piedmont. The Imperial commander, Prospero Colonna, had only 9,000 men to oppose the French advance and was forced to retreat to Milan. Bonnivet overestimated the size of the Imperial army and moved into winter quarters rather than attacking the city; the Imperial commanders were able to summon 15,000 landsknechts and a large force under Bourbon's command by 28 December, when Charles de Lannoy replaced the dying Colonna. Many of the Swiss now abandoned the French army, and Bonnivet began his withdrawal. The French defeat at the Battle of the Sesia, where Bayard was killed while commanding the French rearguard, again demonstrated the power of massed arquebusiers against more traditional troops; the French army then retreated over the Alps in disarray.
D'Avalos and Bourbon crossed the Alps with nearly 11,000 men and invaded Provence in early July 1524. Sweeping through most of the smaller towns unopposed, Bourbon entered the provincial capital of Aix-en-Provence on 9 August 1524, taking the title of Count of Provence and pledging his allegiance to Henry VIII in return for the latter's support against Francis. By mid-August, Bourbon and d'Avalos had besieged Marseille, the only stronghold in Provence that remained in French hands. Their assaults on the city failed and when the French army commanded by Francis himself arrived at Avignon at the end of September 1524, they were forced to retreat back to Italy.
## Francis I's campaign in Italy (October 1524 – February 1525)
### French advance into Lombardy
On 17 October 1524, as Bourbon and Pescara were returning to Genoa, Francis confirmed his mother as regent during his absence. Shortly afterwards, he crossed the Alps and advanced on Milan at the head of an army numbering more than 40,000. Imperialist troops, not yet recovered from the campaign in Provence, were in no position to offer serious resistance.
As the French advanced, the viceroy of Naples retreated from Asti towards Milan. Lannoy, the city's viceroy, who had concentrated 16,000 men to resist the French advance, decided that Milan could not be defended. The city was ridden with the plague, and so to avoid his troops becoming infected, on 26 October he withdrew to Lodi, leaving Milan through one gate as the French vanguard under Salazzo entered through another.
Francis installed Louis II de la Trémoille as the city's governor. At the urging of Bonnivet and against the advice of his other senior commanders, who favored a more vigorous pursuit of the retreating Lannoy, the king's army then advanced on Pavia, where Antonio de Leyva remained with a sizable garrison. The main mass of French troops arrived at Pavia on 24 October.
### Siege of Pavia
By 2 November, Montmorency had crossed the river Ticino and invested Pavia from the south, completing its encirclement. Inside were about 9,000 men, mainly mercenaries whom Antonio de Leyva was forced to pay by melting down the gold and silver treasures in the city's churches. The French bombardment of Pavia began on 6 November. On 21 November, Francis attempted an assault on the city through two of the breaches but was beaten back with heavy casualties. Hampered by rainy weather and a lack of gunpowder, the French decided to wait for the defenders to starve.
In early December, a Spanish force commanded by Hugo of Moncada landed near Genoa, intending to intervene in a conflict between pro-Valois and pro-Habsburg factions in the city. Francis dispatched a larger force under Michele Antonio I of Saluzzo to intercept them. Confronted by the more numerous French and left without naval support by the arrival of a pro-Valois fleet commanded by Andrea Doria, the Spanish troops surrendered.
In January 1525, Lannoy was reinforced by the arrival of Frundsberg with fresh landsknechts and cavalrymen, which enable him to renew the offensive. The French outpost at San Angelo was taken, cutting the lines of communication between Pavia and Milan, while a separate column of landsknechts advanced on Belgiojoso and, despite being briefly pushed back by a raid led by Medici and Bonnivet, occupied the town. On 22 January the main imperial army at Lodi simulated an offensive against Milan, which failed to lure away the French. The Imperial commanders marched with 22,000 infantry, 2,300 cavalry, and 17 cannon to Pavia from Lodi on 25 January.
Early in February, a thousand Italian soldiers were defeated at Alessandria before they could reach the French at Pavia. The French position was weakened when Medici returned to Pavia on 8 February and replenished the garrison's supply of gunpowder, gathered by the Duke of Ferrara. It was further weakened by the desertion of 2,000 Germans and the departure of nearly 5,000 Grisons Swiss mercenaries, who returned to their cantons in order to defend their own region following the capture of the town of Chiavenna by Milanese troops. Francis was encamped along with the majority of his forces in the great walled park of Mirabello outside the city walls, placing them between Leyva's garrison and the approaching relief army. On 4 February an attack on the park was repelled by the French. Skirmishes and sallies by the garrison continued through the month of February. Medici was seriously wounded and withdrew to Piacenza to recuperate, forcing Francis to recall much of the Milan garrison to offset the departure of the Black Band. On 21 February, imperial troops were repelled by the French when they attempted to storm the gates of the park.
### Albany's advance towards Naples
After the failure of a peace mission proposed by Pope Clement VII, Francis and the pope negotiated an alliance in secret. Negotiations were concluded on 12 December 1524, and a secret treaty was signed by the pope on 5 January. Clement pledged not to assist Charles in exchange for Francis's assistance with the conquest of Naples by giving Albany free passage through his lands. In return, Francis promised to cede lands and maintain Medici rule in Florence.
The pope tried to stop Francis from acting immediately, because of the dangers inherent in fighting during the winter months. Against the pope's advice, and the counsel of his own senior commanders, Francis almost immediately detached a portion of his forces under the Duke of Albany, sending 5,000 infantry and 500 cavalry south to aid the pope in the invasion of Naples. The size of the army grew when it was joined by Papal States recruits, and French infantry led by the Italian condottiero (Italian mercenary captain), Renzo da Ceri.
Francis's ploy failed to achieve his aim of leading the Spaniards to abandon northern Italy, as the Imperial commanders ultimately decided not to attack Albany but to concentrate on relieving Pavia. Lannoy attempted to intercept the expedition near Fiorenzuola, but suffered heavy casualties and was forced to return to Lodi by the intervention of the Black Bands of Giovanni de' Medici, which had just entered French service.
### Battle of Pavia
On the night of 23 February, Imperial artillery began a bombardment to distract the French, whilst the remainder of the Imperial army moved from their camp to flank the brook that separated the two armies. Ahead of them were sappers, who dismantled part of the park wall as quietly as possible, in an operation that took most of the night. Columns of Imperial soldiers then entered the park.
At the same time, Leyva sortied from Pavia with what remained of the garrison. In the ensuing four-hour battle, the French heavy cavalry masked its own artillery by a rapid advance, and was surrounded and cut apart by landsknechts and a thousand massed Spanish arquebusiers, who attacked the French from concealed positions in the park's woodland. The French knights in their suits of armour were shot down with ease, and later butchered with daggers. A series of protracted infantry engagements resulted in the rout of the Swiss and French infantry. The French suffered massive casualties, losing the majority of their army. Bonnivet, Jacques de la Palice, La Trémoille, and Richard de la Pole were killed, while de Montmorency, de la Marck, and Francis himself were taken prisoner along with a host of lesser nobles.
## March 1525 – May 1526
### Imprisonment and release of Francis I
The night following the Battle of Pavia, Francis gave Lannoy a letter to be delivered to his mother in Paris, in which he related what had befallen him: "To inform you of how the rest of my ill-fortune is proceeding, all is lost to me save honour and life, which is safe." The broken remnants of the French forces, aside from a small garrison left to hold the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, retreated across the Alps under the nominal command of Charles IV of Alençon, reaching Lyon by March 1525.
After Pavia, the fate of the French king, and of France itself, became the subject of furious diplomatic manoeuvring. Charles V, lacking funds to pay for the war, sought to marry Isabella of Portugal, who would bring with her a substantial dowry. Bourbon, meanwhile, plotted with Henry to invade and partition France, and at the same time the Milanese chancellor, Girolamo Morone [it], proposed to d'Avalos that he lead the Italians against their oppressors, and seize the Neapolitan crown for himself.
Louise of Savoy raised a small army and funds to defend France against an expected attack upon its eastern borders by English troops. She also sent a first French mission to Suleiman the Magnificent, requesting assistance, but the mission was lost on its way in Bosnia. In December 1525 a second mission was sent, led by the Croatian nobleman John Frangipani, which managed to reach Constantinople with secret letters asking for the deliverance of Francis and an attack on the House of Habsburg. Frangipani left Constantinople on 8 February with an answer from Suleiman, that promised nothing.
Francis' captors, concerned he could be rescued by a French military expedition or might escape, decided it would be safer if he was held captive elsewhere. Francis was convinced he would gain his freedom again if he obtained a personal audience with Charles, and pressed Lannoy, who had intended to transport the king to the Castel Nuovo in Naples, to send him to Spain instead. Lannoy agreed, and on 31 May 1525 he was taken by ship from Genoa, having been told he was being taken to Naples. Francis arrived in Barcelona on 19 June.
Francis was initially held at the castle at Tarragona, before being moved to Valencia and then to a nearby villa in Benisanó, but Charles, urged to negotiate a settlement by Montmorency and Lannoy, who suggested that the Italians would soon prove unfaithful to their Imperial alliance, ordered the king brought to Madrid and imprisoned in the citadel there. Charles showed no desire to receive Francis personally. Meanwhile, Henry II of Navarre, who had fought alongside Francis at Pavia and who had been imprisoned in Madrid as well, escaped in December 1525. The Spanish conquest of Iberian Navarre continued, with Charles occupying Navarre and Henry remaining at large following his escape from Imperial captivity.
### Treaty of Madrid (1526)
Charles demanded not only the surrender of Lombardy, but also of Burgundy and Provence, forcing Francis to argue that French law prevented him from surrendering any lands possessed by the crown without the approval of Parlement, which would not be forthcoming. By the beginning of 1526, Charles was faced with demands from Venice and the Pope to restore Francesco II Sforza to the throne of the Duchy of Milan, and had become anxious to achieve a settlement with the French before another war began.
Francis, having argued to retain Burgundy without result, was prepared to surrender it to achieve his own release. On 14 January 1526, Charles and Francis signed and agreed to the Treaty of Madrid. The French king renounced all his claims in Italy, Artois, and Flanders. He surrendered Burgundy to Charles, agreed to send two of his sons to be hostages at the Spanish court, and to restore to Bourbon the territories that had been seized from him. He also agreed to persuade Henry to relinquish the throne of Navarre in favor of Charles "in order to uproot the errors of the Lutheran sect and the rest of condemned sects", and requested to marry Charles' sister Eleanor.
### Aftermath of the treaty
Francis was released on 6 March. On 17 March, he crossed the Bidasoa north into France, while at the same time the Dauphin and his brother, who had been brought to Bayonne by Louise and Lautrec, crossed into Spain and into captivity. By this time, Francis had attained peace with England by the Treaty of Hampton Court; drafted by Wolsey and the French ambassador at Hampton Court Palace. The treaty—in which France and England agreed not to make an alliance with the Empire independently—was signed in August 1526.
Clement VII became convinced that the Emperor's growing power was a threat to his own position in Italy, and Venetian and papal envoys went to Francis suggesting an alliance against Charles. Francis never had any intentions of complying with the remaining provisions of the Treaty of Madrid. On 10 May 1526 the royal council decided to break the treaty. It was made clear that the king would not be bound by the treaty because it had been signed when he was a prisoner under duress to give promises. In June 1526, Francis and the Pope, together with the northern Italian cities of Milan, Venice, Florence and Genoa, launched the War of the League of Cognac at Angoulème in an attempt to reclaim the territory the French had lost to the Empire; Henry, named the 'protector' of the League, was not in fact formally involved.
Francis and his successor, Henry II, would continue to assert their claims to Milan through the remainder of the Italian Wars, only relinquishing them after the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559. France failed to regain any former possessions in Lombardy; the terms of the Peace that ended the Italians Wars gave Spain control of Milan, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, Savoy, and Piedmont.
|
196,020 |
Crocodilia
| 1,173,511,221 |
Order of mostly large, predatory, semiaquatic reptiles
|
[
"Articles containing video clips",
"Crocodilians",
"Extant Campanian first appearances",
"Taxa named by Richard Owen"
] |
Crocodilia (or Crocodylia, both /krɒkəˈdɪliə/) is an order of mostly large, predatory, semiaquatic reptiles, known as crocodilians. They first appeared 94 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period (Cenomanian stage) and are the closest living relatives of birds, as the two groups are the only known survivors of the Archosauria. Members of the order's total group, the clade Pseudosuchia, appeared about 250 million years ago in the Early Triassic period, and diversified during the Mesozoic era. The order Crocodilia includes the true crocodiles (family Crocodylidae), the alligators and caimans (family Alligatoridae), and the gharial and false gharial (family Gavialidae). Although the term 'crocodiles' (or 'crocs') is sometimes used to refer to all of these, crocodilians is a less ambiguous vernacular term for members of this group.
Large, solidly built, lizard-like reptiles, crocodilians have long flattened snouts, laterally compressed tails, and eyes, ears, and nostrils at the top of the head. They swim well and can move on land in a "high walk" and a "low walk", while smaller species are even capable of galloping. Their skin is thick and covered in non-overlapping scales. They have conical, peg-like teeth and a powerful bite. They have a four-chambered heart and, somewhat like birds, a unidirectional looping system of airflow within the lungs, but like other living reptiles they are ectotherms.
Crocodilians are found mainly in lowlands in the tropics, but alligators also live in the southeastern United States and the Yangtze River in China. They are largely carnivorous, the various species feeding on animals such as fish, crustaceans, molluscs, birds, and mammals; some species like the Indian gharial are specialised feeders, while others like the saltwater crocodile have generalised diets. Crocodilians are typically solitary and territorial, though cooperative feeding does occur. During breeding, dominant males try to monopolise available females. Females lay eggs in holes or in mounds and, unlike most other reptiles, care for their hatched young.
Some species of crocodilians are known to have attacked humans. The largest number of attacks comes from the Nile crocodile. Humans are the greatest threat to crocodilian populations through activities that include hunting, poaching, and habitat destruction, but farming of crocodilians has greatly reduced unlawful trading in wild skins. Artistic and literary representations of crocodilians have appeared in human cultures around the world since Ancient Egypt. The earliest known mention of the story that crocodiles weep for their victims was in the 9th century; it was later spread by Sir John Mandeville in 1400 and then by William Shakespeare in the late 16th century and early 17th century.
## Spelling and etymology
Crocodilia and Crocodylia have been used interchangeably for decades starting with Schmidt's redescription of the group from the formerly defunct term Loricata. Schmidt used the older term Crocodilia, based on Owen's original name for the group. Shortly after, Wermuth opted for Crocodylia as the proper name for this redescribed group, basing it on the type genus Crocodylus (Laurenti, 1768). Dundee—in a revision of many reptilian and amphibian names—argued strongly for Crocodylia to be the spelling for the group. However, it was not until the advent of cladistics and phylogenetic nomenclature that a more solid justification for assuming one spelling over the other was proposed.
Prior to 1988, Crocodilia (also called Crocodylia) was a group that encompassed the modern-day animals, as well as their more distant relatives now in the larger groups called Crocodylomorpha and Pseudosuchia. Under its current definition as a crown group (as opposed to a stem-based group), Crocodylia is now restricted to only the last common ancestor of today's modern-day crocodilians (alligators, crocodiles, and gharials) and all of its descendants (living or extinct).
Crocodilia appears to be a Latinizing of the Greek κροκόδειλος (crocodeilos), which means both lizard and Nile crocodile. Crocodylia, as coined by Wermuth, in regards to the genus Crocodylus appears to be derived from the ancient Greek κρόκη (kroke)—meaning shingle or pebble—and δρîλος or δρεîλος (dr(e)ilos) for "worm". The name may refer to the animal's habit of basking on the pebbled shores of the Nile.
## Taxonomy and classification
### Evolution
The main distinguishing characteristic of diapsid tetrapods is the presence of two openings (temporal fenestrae) on either side of the skull behind the eye. Living diapsids include modern reptiles and birds. The feature that distinguishes archosaurs from other diapsids is an extra pair of openings in the skull (antorbital fenestrae) in front of the eye sockets. Archosauria is the crown group containing the most recent common ancestor of crocodilians and birds and all its descendants. It comprises the Pseudosuchia, the "false crocodiles", and the Avemetatarsalia, which in turn comprises the dinosaurs (including birds) and pterosaurs. Pseudosuchia is defined as living crocodilians and all archosaurs more closely related to crocodilians than to birds. The Pseudosuchia–bird split is assumed to have occurred close to the Permian–Triassic mass extinction event. In modern crocodilians, the antorbital fenestrae are walled off externally and exist merely as sinuses. They were present in most of their fossil ancestors as small openings.
The crocodylomorphs are the only pseudosuchians to have survived the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, 201.3 million years ago. During the early Jurassic period, the dinosaurs became dominant on land, and the crocodylomorphs underwent major adaptive diversifications to fill ecological niches vacated by recently extinguished groups. Unfolding fossil evidence shows that Mesozoic crocodylomorphs had a much greater diversity of forms than modern crocodilians. Some became small fast-moving insectivores, others specialist fish-eaters, still others marine and terrestrial carnivores, and a few became herbivores. The earliest stage of crocodilian evolution was the protosuchians, which evolved in the late Triassic and early Jurassic. They were followed by the mesosuchians, which diversified widely during the Jurassic and the Tertiary. Another group, the eusuchians, appeared in the late Cretaceous 80 million years ago and includes all the crocodilians living today.
Protosuchians were small, mostly terrestrial animals with short snouts and long limbs. They had bony armor in the form of two rows of plates extending from head to tail, and this armor is retained by most modern crocodilians. Their vertebrae were convex on the two main articulating surfaces, and their bony palates were little developed. The mesosuchians saw a fusion of the palatine bones to form a secondary bony palate and a great extension of the nasal passages to near the pterygoid bones. This allowed the animal to breathe through its nostrils while its mouth was open under the water. The eusuchians continued this process with the interior nostrils now opening through an aperture in the pterygoid bones. The vertebrae of eusuchians had one convex and one concave articulating surface, allowing for a ball and socket type joint between the vertebrae, bringing greater flexibility and strength. The oldest known eusuchian is Hylaeochampsa vectiana from the lower Cretaceous of the Isle of Wight in the United Kingdom. It was followed by crocodilians such as the Planocraniidae, the so-called 'hoofed crocodiles', in the Palaeogene. Spanning the Cretaceous and Palaeogene periods is the genus Borealosuchus of North America, with six species, though its phylogenetic position is not settled.
The three primary branches of Crocodilia had diverged by the end of the Mesozoic. The possible earliest-known members of the group may be Portugalosuchus from the Cenomanian (95 million years ago), though the classification of this taxon has been disputed. After are alligatoroids and gavialoids that lived in North America and Europe during the Campanian (around 83.6–72.1 million years ago). The first known crocodyloids appeared in the Maastrichtian (around 72.1–66.0 million years ago), that lineage must have been present during the Campanian, and the earliest alligatoroids and gavialoids include highly derived forms, which indicates that the time of the actual divergence between the three lineages must have been a pre-Campanian event.
Scientists conclude that environmental factors played a major role in the evolution of crocodilians and their ancestors, with warmer climate being associated with high evolutionary rates and large body sizes.
### Relationships
Crocodylia is cladistically defined as the last common ancestor of Gavialis gangeticus (the gharial), Alligator mississippiensis (American alligator), and Crocodylus rhombifer (the Cuban crocodile) and all of its descendants. The phylogenetic relationships of crocodilians has been the subject of debate and conflicting results. Many studies and their resulting cladograms, or "family trees" of crocodilians, have found the "short-snouted" families of Crocodylidae and Alligatoridae to be close relatives, with the long-snouted Gavialidae as a divergent branch of the tree. The resulting group of short-snouted species, named Brevirostres, was supported mainly by morphological studies which analyzed skeletal features alone.
However, recent molecular studies using DNA sequencing of living crocodilians have rejected this distinct group Brevirostres, with the long-snouted gavialids more closely related to crocodiles than to alligators, with the new grouping of gavialids and crocodiles named Longirostres.
Below is a cladogram showing the relationships of the major extant crocodilian groups based on molecular studies, excluding separate extinct taxa:
## Anatomy and physiology
Crocodilians range in size from the Paleosuchus and Osteolaemus species, which reach 1–1.5 m (3 ft 3 in – 4 ft 11 in), to the saltwater crocodile, which reaches 7 m (23 ft) and weighs up to 2,000 kg (4,400 lb), though some prehistoric species such as the late Cretaceous Deinosuchus were even larger at up to about 11 m (36 ft) and 3,450 kg (7,610 lb). They tend to be sexually dimorphic, with males much larger than females. Though there is diversity in snout and tooth shape, all crocodilian species have essentially the same body morphology. They have solidly built, lizard-like bodies with elongated, flattened snouts and laterally compressed tails. Their limbs are reduced in size; the front feet have five digits with little or no webbing, and the hind feet have four webbed digits and a rudimentary fifth.
The skeleton is somewhat typical of tetrapods, although the skull, pelvis and ribs are specialised; in particular, the cartilaginous processes of the ribs allow the thorax to collapse during diving and the structure of the pelvis can accommodate large masses of food, or more air in the lungs. Both sexes have a cloaca, a single chamber and outlet at the base of the tail into which the intestinal, urinary and genital tracts open. It houses the penis in males and the clitoris in females. The crocodilian penis is permanently erect and relies on cloacal muscles for eversion and elastic ligaments and a tendon for recoil. The gonads are located near the kidneys.
### Locomotion
Crocodilians are excellent swimmers. During aquatic locomotion, the muscular tail undulates from side to side to drive the animal through the water while the limbs are held close to the body to reduce drag. When the animal needs to stop, steer, or manoeuvre in a different direction, the limbs are splayed out. Crocodilians generally cruise slowly on the surface or underwater with gentle sinuous movements of the tail, but when pursued or when chasing prey they can move rapidly. Crocodilians are less well-adapted for moving on land, and are unusual among vertebrates in having two different means of terrestrial locomotion: the "high walk" and the "low walk". Their ankle joints flex in a different way from those of other reptiles, a feature they share with some early archosaurs. One of the upper row of ankle bones, the astragalus, moves with the tibia and fibula. The other, the calcaneum, is functionally part of the foot, and has a socket into which a peg from the astragalus fits. The result is that the legs can be held almost vertically beneath the body when on land, and the foot can swivel during locomotion with a twisting movement at the ankle.
The high walk of crocodilians, with the belly and most of the tail being held off the ground, is unique among living reptiles. It somewhat resembles the walk of a mammal, with the same sequence of limb movements: left fore, right hind, right fore, left hind. The low walk is similar to the high walk, but without the body being raised, and is quite different from the sprawling walk of salamanders and lizards. The animal can change from one walk to the other instantaneously, but the high walk is the usual means of locomotion on land. The animal may push its body up and use this form immediately, or may take one or two strides of low walk before raising the body higher. Unlike most other land vertebrates, when crocodilians increase their pace of travel they increase the speed at which the lower half of each limb (rather than the whole leg) swings forward; by this means, stride length increases while stride duration decreases.
Though typically slow on land, crocodilians can produce brief bursts of speed, and some can run at 12 to 14 km/h (7.5 to 8.7 mph) for short distances. A fast entry into water from a muddy bank can be effected by plunging to the ground, twisting the body from side to side and splaying out the limbs. In some small species such as the freshwater crocodile, a running gait can progress to a bounding gallop. This involves the hind limbs launching the body forward and the fore limbs subsequently taking the weight. Next, the hind limbs swing forward as the spine flexes dorso-ventrally, and this sequence of movements is repeated. During terrestrial locomotion, a crocodilian can keep its back and tail straight, since the scales are attached to the vertebrae by muscles. Whether on land or in water, crocodilians can jump or leap by pressing their tails and hind limbs against the substrate and then launching themselves into the air.
### Jaws and teeth
The snout shape of crocodilians varies between species. Crocodiles may have either broad or slender snouts, while alligators and caimans have mostly broad ones. Gharials have snouts that are extremely elongated. The muscles that close the jaws are much more massive and powerful than the ones that open them, and a crocodilian's jaws can be held shut by a person fairly easily. Conversely, the jaws are extremely difficult to pry open. The powerful closing muscles attach at the median portion of the lower jaw and the jaw hinge attaches to the atlanto-occipital joint, allowing the animal to open its mouth fairly wide. The tongue cannot move freely but is held in place by a folded membrane.
Crocodilians have some of the strongest bite forces in the animal kingdom. In a study published in 2003, an American alligator's bite force was measured at up to 2,125 lbf (9.45 kN). In a 2012 study, a saltwater crocodile's bite force was measured even higher, at 3,700 lbf (16 kN). This study also found no correlation between bite force and snout shape. Nevertheless, the gharial's extremely slender jaws are relatively weak and built more for quick jaw closure. The bite force of Deinosuchus may have measured 23,000 lbf (100 kN), even greater than that of theropod dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus.
Crocodilian teeth vary from blunt and dull to sharp and needle-like. Broad-snouted species have teeth that vary in size, while those of slender-snouted species are more uniform. The teeth of crocodiles and gharials tend to be more visible than those of alligators and caimans when the jaws are closed. The easiest way to distinguish crocodiles from alligators is by looking at their jaw line. The teeth on the lower jaw of an alligator fit into sockets in the upper jaw, so only the upper teeth are visible when the mouth is closed. The teeth on the lower jaw of a crocodile fit into grooves on the outside of the top jaw making both the upper and lower teeth visible when the mouth is closed.
Crocodilians are homodonts, meaning each of their teeth are all of the same type (they do not possess different tooth types, such as canines and molars) and polyphyodonts are able to replace each of their approximately 80 teeth up to 50 times in their 35 to 75-year lifespan. They are the only non-mammalian vertebrates with tooth sockets. Next to each full-grown tooth there is a small replacement tooth and an odontogenic stem cell in the dental lamina in standby, which can be activated when required. Tooth replacement slows significantly and eventually stops as the animal grows old.
### Sense organs
The eyes, ears and nostrils of crocodilians are at the top of the head. This allows them to stalk their prey with most of their bodies underwater. The eyes possess a tapetum lucidum which enhances vision in low light. While eyesight is fairly good in air, it is significantly weakened underwater. The fovea in other vertebrates is usually circular, but in crocodiles it is a horizontal bar of tightly packed receptors across the middle of the retina. When the animal completely submerges, the nictitating membranes cover its eyes. In addition, glands on the nictitating membrane secrete a salty lubricant that keeps the eye clean. When a crocodilian leaves the water and dries off, this substance is visible as "tears".
The ears are adapted for hearing both in air and underwater, and the eardrums are protected by flaps that can be opened or closed by muscles. Crocodilians have a wide hearing range, with sensitivity comparable to most birds and many mammals. The well-developed trigeminal nerve allows them to detect vibrations in the water (such as those made by potential prey). Crocodilians have only one olfactory chamber and the vomeronasal organ is absent in the adults indicating all olfactory perception is limited to the olfactory system. Behavioural and olfactometer experiments indicate that crocodiles detect both air-borne and water-soluble chemicals and use their olfactory system for hunting. When above water, crocodiles enhance their ability to detect volatile odorants by gular pumping, a rhythmic movement of the floor of the pharynx. They appear to have lost their pineal organ, but still show signs of melatonin rhythms.
### Skin and scales
The skin of crocodilians is thick and cornified, and is clad in non-overlapping scales known as scutes, arranged in regular rows and patterns. These scales are continually being produced by cell division in the underlying layer of the epidermis, the stratum germinativum, and the surface of individual scutes sloughs off periodically. The outer surface of the scutes consists of the relatively rigid beta-keratin while the hinge region between the scutes contains only the more pliable alpha-keratin.
Many of the scutes are strengthened by bony plates known as osteoderms, which are the same size and shape as the superficial scales but grow beneath them. They are most numerous on the back and neck of the animal and may form a protective armour. They often have prominent, lumpy ridges and are covered in hard-wearing beta-keratin. The head and jaws lack actual scales and are instead covered in tight keratinised skin that cracks due to stress. The skin on the neck and flanks is loose, while that on the abdomen and underside of the tail is sheathed in large, flat square scutes arranged in neat rows. The scutes contain blood vessels and may act to absorb or radiate heat during thermoregulation. Research also suggests that alkaline ions released into the blood from the calcium and magnesium in these dermal bones act as a buffer during prolonged submersion when increasing levels of carbon dioxide would otherwise cause acidosis.
Some scutes contain a single pore known as an integumentary sense organ. Crocodiles and gharials have these on large parts of their bodies, while alligators and caimans only have them on the head. Their exact function is not fully understood, but it has been suggested that they may be mechanosensory organs. Another possibility is that they may produce an oily secretion that prevents mud from adhering to the skin. There are prominent paired integumentary glands in skin folds on the throat, and others in the side walls of the cloaca. Various functions for these have been suggested. They may play a part in communication, as indirect evidence suggest that they secrete pheromones used in courtship or nesting. The skin of crocodilians is tough and can withstand damage from conspecifics, and the immune system is effective enough to heal wounds within a few days.
### Circulation
The crocodilian has perhaps the most complex vertebrate circulatory system. It has a four-chambered heart and two ventricles, an unusual trait among extant reptiles, and both a left and right aorta which are connected by a hole called the Foramen of Panizza. Like birds and mammals, crocodilians have heart valves that direct blood flow in a single direction through the heart chambers. They also have unique cog-teeth-like valves that, when interlocked, direct blood to the left aorta and away from the lungs, and then back around the body. This system may allow the animals to remain submerged for a longer period, but this explanation has been questioned. Other possible reasons for the peculiar circulatory system include assistance with thermoregulatory needs, prevention of pulmonary oedema, or faster recovery from metabolic acidosis. Retaining carbon dioxide within the body permits an increase in the rate of gastric acid secretion and thus the efficiency of digestion, and other gastrointestinal organs such as the pancreas, spleen, small intestine, and liver also function more efficiently.
When submerged, a crocodilian's heart rate slows down to one or two beats a minute, and blood flow to the muscles is reduced. When it rises and takes a breath, its heart rate speeds up in seconds, and the muscles receive newly oxygenated blood. Unlike many marine mammals, crocodilians have little myoglobin to store oxygen in their muscles. During diving, muscles are supplied with oxygen when an increasing concentration of bicarbonate ions causes haemoglobin in the blood to release oxygen.
### Respiration
Crocodilians were traditionally thought to breathe like mammals, with airflow moving in and out tidally, but studies published in 2010 and 2013 conclude that crocodilians breathe more like birds, with airflow moving in a unidirectional loop within the lungs. When a crocodilian inhales, air flows through the trachea and into two primary bronchi, or airways, which branch off into narrower secondary passageways. The air continues to move through these, then into even narrower tertiary airways, and then into other secondary airways which were bypassed the first time. The air then flows back into the primary airways and is exhaled. These aerodynamic valves within the bronchial tree have been hypothesised to explain how crocodilians can have unidirectional airflow without the aid of avian-like air sacs.
The lungs of crocodilians are attached to the liver and the pelvis by the diaphragmaticus muscle (analogous of the diaphragm in mammals). During inhalation, the external intercostal muscles expand the ribs, allowing the animal to take in more air, while the ischiopubis muscle causes the hips to swing downwards and push the belly outward, and the diaphragmaticus pulls the liver back. When exhaling, the internal intercostal muscles push the ribs inward, while the rectus abdominis pulls the hips and liver forwards and the belly inward. Because the lungs expand into the space formerly occupied by the liver and are compressed when it moves back into position, this motion is sometimes referred to as a "hepatic piston". Crocodilians can also use these muscles to adjust the position of their lungs; thereby controlling their buoyancy in the water. An animal sinks when the lungs are pulled towards the tail and floats when they move back towards the head. This allows them to move through the water without creating disturbances that could alert potential prey. They can also spin and twist by moving their lungs laterally.
Swimming and diving crocodilians appear to rely on lung volume more for buoyancy than oxygen storage. Just before diving, the animal exhales to reduce its lung volume and achieve negative buoyancy. When submerging, the nostrils of a crocodilian shut tight. All species have a palatal valve, a membranous flap of skin at the back of the oral cavity that prevents water from flowing into the throat, oesophagus, and trachea. This enables them to open their mouths underwater without drowning. Crocodilians typically remain underwater for fifteen minutes or less at a time, but some can hold their breath for up to two hours under ideal conditions. The maximum diving depth is unknown, but crocodiles can dive to at least 20 m (66 ft).
Vocalizing is produced by vibrating vocal folds in the larynx. The folds of the American alligator have a complex morphology consisting of epithelium, lamina propria and muscle, and according to Riede et al. (2015), "it is reasonable to expect species-specific morphologies in vocal folds/analogues as far back as basal reptiles". Crocodilian vocal folds lack the elasticity of mammalian ones; but the larynx is still capable of complex motor control similar to birds and mammals and can adequately control its fundamental frequency.
### Digestion
Crocodilian teeth are adapted for seizing and holding prey, and food is swallowed unchewed. The digestive tract is relatively short, as meat is a fairly simple substance to digest. The stomach is divided into two parts: a muscular gizzard that grinds food, and a digestive chamber where enzymes work on it. The stomach is more acidic than that of any other vertebrate and contains ridges for gastroliths, which play a role in the mechanical breakdown of food. Digestion takes place more quickly at higher temperatures. Crocodilians have a very low metabolic rate and consequently, low energy requirements. This allows them to survive for many months on a single large meal, digesting the food slowly. They can withstand extended fasting, living on stored fat between meals. Even recently hatched crocodiles are able to survive 58 days without food, losing 23% of their bodyweight during this time. An adult crocodile needs between a tenth and a fifth of the amount of food necessary for a lion of the same weight, and can live for half a year without eating.
### Thermoregulation
Crocodilians are ectotherms, producing relatively little heat internally and relying on external sources to raise their body temperatures. The sun's heat is the main means of warming for any crocodilian, while immersion in water may either raise its temperature by conduction, or cool the animal in hot weather. The main method for regulating its temperature is behavioural. For example, an alligator in temperate regions may start the day by basking in the sun on land. A bulky animal, it warms up slowly, but at some time later in the day it moves into the water, still exposing its dorsal surface to the sun. At night it remains submerged, and its temperature slowly falls. The basking period is extended in winter and reduced in summer. For crocodiles in the tropics, avoiding overheating is generally the main problem. They may bask briefly in the morning but then move into the shade, remaining there for the rest of the day, or submerge themselves in water to keep cool. Gaping with the mouth can provide cooling by evaporation from the mouth lining. By these means, the temperature range of crocodilians is usually maintained between 25 and 35 °C (77 and 95 °F), and mainly stays in the range 30 to 33 °C (86 to 91 °F).
The ranges of the American and Chinese alligator extend into regions that sometimes experience periods of frost in winter. Being ectothermic, the internal body temperature of crocodilians falls as the temperature drops, and they become sluggish. They may become more active on warm days, but do not usually feed at all during the winter. In cold weather, they remain submerged with their tails in deeper, less cold water and their nostrils just projecting through the surface. If ice forms on the water, they maintain ice-free breathing holes, and there have been occasions when their snouts have become frozen into the ice. Temperature sensing probes implanted in wild American alligators have found that their core body temperatures can descend to around 5 °C (41 °F), but as long as they remain able to breathe they show no ill effects when the weather warms up.
### Osmoregulation
No living species of crocodilian can be considered truly marine; although the saltwater crocodile and the American crocodile are able to swim out to sea, their normal habitats are river mouths, estuaries, mangrove swamps, and hypersaline lakes, though several extinct species have had marine habitats, including the recently extinct Ikanogavialis papuensis, which occurred in a fully marine habitat in the Solomon Islands coastlines. All crocodilians need to maintain the concentration of salt in body fluids at suitable levels. Osmoregulation is related to the quantity of salts and water exchanged with the environment. Intake of water and salts takes place across the lining of the mouth, when water is drunk, incidentally while feeding, and when present in foods. Water is lost from the body during breathing, and both salts and water are lost in the urine and faeces, through the skin, and via salt-excreting glands on the tongue, though these are only present in crocodiles and gharials. The skin is a largely effective barrier to both water and ions. Gaping causes water loss by evaporation from the lining of the mouth, and on land, water is also lost through the skin. Large animals are better able to maintain homeostasis at times of osmotic stress than smaller ones. Newly hatched crocodilians are much less tolerant of exposure to salt water than are older juveniles, presumably because they have a higher surface-area-to-volume ratio.
The kidneys and excretory system are much the same as in other reptiles, but crocodilians do not have a bladder. In fresh water, the osmolality (the concentration of solutes that contribute to a solution's osmotic pressure) in the plasma is much higher than it is in the surrounding water. The animals are well-hydrated, and the urine in the cloaca is abundant and dilute, nitrogen being excreted as ammonium bicarbonate. Sodium loss is low and mainly takes place through the skin in freshwater conditions. In seawater, the opposite is true. The osmolality in the plasma is lower than the surrounding water, which is dehydrating for the animal. The cloacal urine is much more concentrated, white, and opaque, with the nitrogenous waste being mostly excreted as insoluble uric acid.
## Distribution and habitat
Crocodilians are amphibious reptiles, spending part of their time in water and part on land. The last surviving fully terrestrial genus, Mekosuchus, became extinct about 3000 years ago after humans had arrived on its Pacific islands, making the extinction possibly anthropogenic. Typically they are creatures of the tropics; the main exceptions are the American and Chinese alligators, whose ranges consist of the south-eastern United States and the Yangtze River, respectively. Florida, in the United States, is the only place that crocodiles and alligators live side by side. Most crocodilians live in the lowlands, and few are found above 1,000 metres (3,300 ft), where the temperatures are typically about 5 °C (9 °F) lower than at the coast. None of them permanently reside in the sea, though some can venture into it, and several species can tolerate the brackish water of estuaries, mangrove swamps, and the extreme salinity of hypersaline lakes. The saltwater crocodile has the widest distribution of any crocodilian, with a range extending from eastern India to New Guinea and northern Australia. Much of its success is due to its ability to swim out to sea and colonise new locations, but it is not restricted to the marine environment and spends much time in estuaries, rivers, and large lakes.
Various types of aquatic habitats are used by different crocodilians. Some species are relatively more terrestrial and prefer swamps, ponds, and the edges of lakes, where they can bask in the sun and there is plenty of plant life supporting a diverse fauna. Others spend more time in the water and inhabit the lower stretches of rivers, mangrove swamps, and estuaries. These habitats also have a rich flora and provide plenty of food. The Asian gharials find the fish on which they feed in the pools and backwaters of swift rivers. South American dwarf caimans inhabit cool, fast-flowing streams, often near waterfalls, and other caimans live in warmer, turbid lakes and slow-moving rivers. The crocodiles are mainly river dwellers, and the Chinese alligator is found in slow-moving, turbid rivers flowing across China's floodplains. The American alligator is an adaptable species and inhabits swamps, rivers, or lakes with clear or turbid water. Climatic factors also affect crocodilians' distribution locally. During the dry season, caimans can be restricted to deep pools in rivers for several months; in the rainy season, much of the savanna in the Orinoco Llanos is flooded, and they disperse widely across the plain. Desert crocodiles in Mauritania have adapted to their arid environment by staying in caves or burrows in a state of aestivation during the driest periods. When it rains, the reptiles gather at gueltas.
Dry land is also important as it provides opportunities for basking, nesting, and escaping from temperature extremes. Gaping allows evaporation of moisture from the mouth lining and has a cooling effect, and several species make use of shallow burrows on land to keep cool. Wallowing in mud can also help prevent them from overheating. Four species of crocodilians climb trees to bask in areas lacking a shoreline. The type of vegetation bordering the rivers and lakes inhabited by crocodilians is mostly humid tropical forest, with mangrove swamps in estuarine areas. These forests are of great importance to the crocodilians, creating suitable microhabitats where they can flourish. The roots of the trees absorb water when it rains, releasing it back slowly into the environment. When the forests are cleared to make way for agriculture, rivers tend to silt up, the water runs off rapidly, the water courses can dry up in the dry season and flooding can occur in the wet season. Destruction of forest habitat is probably a greater threat to crocodilians than hunting.
### Ecological roles
Being highly efficient predators, crocodilians tend to be top of the food chain in their watery environments. The nest mounds built by some species of crocodilian are used by other animals for their own purposes. American alligator mounds are used by turtles and snakes, both for basking and for laying their own eggs. The Florida red-bellied turtle specialises in this, and alligator mounds may have several clutches of turtle eggs developing alongside the owner's eggs. Alligators modify some wetland habitats in flat areas such as the Everglades by constructing small ponds known as "alligator holes". These create wetter or drier habitats for other organisms, such as plants, fish, invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. In the limestone depressions of cypress swamps, alligator holes tend to be large and deep. Those in marl prairies and rocky glades are usually small and shallow, while those in peat depressions of ridge and slough wetlands are more variable. Man-made holes do not appear to have as large an effect.
In the Amazon basin, when caimans became scarce as a result of overhunting in the mid-20th century, the number of local fish, such as the important arapaima (Arapaima gigas), also decreased. These are nutrient-poor waters, and the urine and faeces of the caimans may have increased primary production by contributing plant nutrients. Thus the presence of the reptiles could have benefited the fish stock; the number of crocodilians in a stretch of water appears to be correlated with the fish population.
## Behavior and life history
### Cognition
Crocodilians are among the most cognitively complex nonavian reptiles, though their behavioral repertoire is less well understood than other vertebrates due to the difficulty of monitoring solitary and often nocturnal predators in aquatic habitats.
Embryological studies of developing amniotes have shown similar brain structures in the telencephalon between crocodilians, mammals, and birds. Accordingly, several behaviors once thoughts unique to mammals and birds have been recently discovered in crocodilians. Some crocodilian species have been observed to use sticks and branches to lure nest-building birds. Several species have been observed to hunt cooperatively, herding and chasing prey. Play, or the free, intrinsically motivated activity by young individuals, has been observed on numerous occasions in crocodilians in both captive and wild settings, with young alligators and crocodiles regularly engaging in object play and social play. As with their mammalian and avian counterparts, play likely performs a significant role in helping these predators to hone their hunting skills and develop their understanding of behavioral tradeoffs. It is important to note that not all higher social behaviors are endemic across these clades. A 2023 study of tinamou, a paleognath avian, and American alligator test subjects found that while the paleognaths were able to engage in visual perspective taking – a cornerstone of advanced social cognition – the alligators didn't appear to do so. Some researchers have proposed to increase the use of crocodilians as test animals in comparative cognition studies.
### Spacing
Adult crocodilians are typically territorial and solitary. Individuals may defend basking spots, nesting sites, feeding areas, nurseries, and overwintering sites. Male saltwater crocodiles establish year-round territories that encompass several female nesting sites. Some species are occasionally gregarious, particularly during droughts, when several individuals gather at remaining water sites. Individuals of some species may share basking sites at certain times of the day.
### Feeding
Crocodilians are largely carnivorous, and the diets of different species can vary with snout shape and tooth sharpness. Species with sharp teeth and long slender snouts, like the Indian gharial and Australian freshwater crocodile, are specialised for feeding on fish, insects, and crustaceans, while extremely broad-snouted species with blunt teeth, like the Chinese alligator and broad-snouted caiman, specialise in eating hard-shelled molluscs. Species whose snouts and teeth are intermediate between these two forms, such as the saltwater crocodile and American alligator, have generalised diets and opportunistically feed on invertebrates, fish, amphibians, other reptiles, birds, and mammals. Though mostly carnivorous, several species of crocodilian have been observed to consume fruit, and this may play a role in seed dispersal.
In general, crocodilians are stalk-and-ambush predators, though hunting strategies vary depending on the individual species and the prey being hunted. Terrestrial prey is stalked from the water's edge and then grabbed and drowned. Gharials and other fish-eating species sweep their jaws sideways to snap up prey, and these animals can leap out of the water to catch birds, bats, and leaping fish. A small animal can be killed by whiplash as the predator shakes its head. Caimans use their tails and bodies to herd fish into shallow water. They may also dig for bottom-dwelling invertebrates, and the smooth-fronted caiman will even hunt on land. Most species will eat anything suitable that comes within reach and are also opportunistic scavengers.
Crocodilians are unable to chew and need to swallow food whole, so prey that is too large to swallow is torn into pieces. They may be unable to deal with a large animal with a thick hide, and may wait until it becomes putrid and comes apart more easily. To tear a chunk of tissue from a large carcass, a crocodilian spins its body continuously while holding on with its jaws, a maneuver known as the "death roll". During cooperative feeding, some individuals may hold on to the prey, while others perform the roll. The animals do not fight, and each retires with a piece of flesh and awaits its next feeding turn. After feeding together, individuals may go their separate ways. Food is typically consumed by crocodilians with their heads above water. The food is held with the tips of the jaws, tossed towards the back of the mouth by an upward jerk of the head and then gulped down. Nile crocodiles may store carcasses underwater for later consumption.
### Reproduction and parenting
Crocodilians are generally polygynous, and individual males try to mate with as many females as they can. Monogamous pairings have been recorded in American alligators, and parthenogenesis has been observed in the American crocodile. Dominant male crocodilians patrol and defend territories which contain several females. Males of some species, like the American alligator, try to attract females with elaborate courtship displays. During courtship, crocodilian males and females may rub against each other, circle around, and perform swimming displays. Copulation typically occurs in the water. When a female is ready to mate, she arches her back while her head and tail submerge. The male rubs across the female's neck and then grasps her with his hindlimbs, placing his tail underneath hers so their cloacas align and his penis can be inserted. Mating can last up to 15 minutes, during which time the pair continuously submerge and surface. While dominant males usually monopolise reproductive females, multiple paternity is known to exist in American alligators, where as many as three different males may sire offspring in a single clutch. Within a month of mating, the female crocodilian begins to make a nest.
Depending on the species, female crocodilians may construct either holes or mounds as nests, the latter made from vegetation, litter, sand, or soil. Nests are typically found near dens or caves. Those made by different females are sometimes close to each other, particularly in hole-nesting species. The number of eggs laid in a single clutch ranges from ten to fifty. Crocodilian eggs are protected by hard shells made of calcium carbonate. The incubation period is two to three months. The temperature at which the eggs incubate determines the sex of the hatchlings. Constant nest temperatures above 32 °C (90 °F) produce more males, while those below 31 °C (88 °F) produce more females. However, sex in crocodilians may be determined in a short interval, and nests are subject to changes in temperature. Most natural nests produce hatchlings of both sexes, though single-sex clutches do occur.
The young may all hatch in a single night. Crocodilians are unusual among reptiles in the amount of parental care provided after the young hatch. The mother helps excavate hatchlings from the nest and carries them to water in her mouth. Newly hatched crocodilians gather together and stay close to their mother. Both male and female adult crocodilians will respond to vocalizations by hatchlings. For spectacled caimans in the Venezuelan llanos, individual mothers are known to leave their young in the same nurseries, or crèches, and one of the mothers guards them. Hatchlings of many species tend to bask in a group during the day and disperse at nightfall to feed. The time it takes young crocodilians to reach independence can vary. For American alligators, groups of young associate with adults for one to two years, while juvenile saltwater and Nile crocodiles become independent in a few months.
### Communication
Crocodilians can communicate with various sounds, including bellows, roars, growls, grunts, barks, coughs, hisses, toots, moos, whines, and chirps. Young start communicating with each other before they are hatched. It has been shown that a light tapping noise near the nest will be repeated by the young, one after another. Such early communication may help them to hatch simultaneously. Once it has broken out of the egg, a juvenile produces yelps and grunts either spontaneously or as a result of external stimuli and even unrelated adults respond quickly to juvenile distress calls.
Vocalisations are frequent as the juveniles disperse, and again as they congregate in the morning. Nearby adults, presumably the parents, also give signals warning of predators or alerting the youngsters to the presence of food. The range and quantity of vocalisations vary between species. Alligators are the noisiest, while some crocodile species are almost completely silent. Adult female New Guinea crocodiles and Siamese crocodiles roar when approached by another adult, while Nile crocodiles grunt or bellow in a similar situation. The American alligator is exceptionally noisy; it emits a series of about seven throaty bellows, each a couple of seconds long, at ten second intervals. It also makes various grunts and hisses. Males create vibrations in the water to send out infrasonic signals that serve to attract females and intimidate rivals. When individuals bellow at the water's surface, the infrasound disturbs the water in nonrandom but visually appealing patterns, leading some ecotourists to describe it as 'water dance'. The enlarged boss of the male gharial may serve as a sound resonator.
Another form of acoustic communication is the head slap. This typically starts with an animal in the water elevating its snout and remaining stationary. After some time, the jaws are opened sharply then clamped shut with a biting motion that makes a loud slapping sound, and this is immediately followed by a loud splash, after which the head may be submerged and copious bubbles produced. Some species then roar, while others slap the water with their tails. Episodes of head slapping spread through the group. The purpose varies, but it seems to be associated with maintaining social relationships, and is also used in courtship. Dominant individuals may also display their body size while swimming at the water surface, and a subordinate will submit by holding its head at an acute angle with the jaws open before retreating underwater.
### Growth and mortality
Mortality is high for eggs and hatchlings, and nests face threats from floods, overheating, and predators. Flooding is a major cause of failure of crocodilians to breed successfully: nests are submerged, developing embryos are deprived of oxygen, and juveniles get washed away. Numerous predators, both mammalian and reptilian, may raid nests and eat crocodilian eggs. Despite the maternal care they receive, hatchlings commonly fall to predation. While the female is transporting some to the nursery area, others are picked off by predators that lurk near the nest. In addition to terrestrial predators, the hatchlings are also subject to aquatic attacks by fish. Birds take their toll, and in any clutch there may be malformed individuals that are unlikely to survive. In northern Australia, the survival rate for saltwater crocodile hatchlings is only twenty-five percent, but with each succeeding year of life this improves, reaching sixty percent by year five.
Mortality rates are fairly low among subadults and adults, though they are occasionally preyed on by large cats and snakes. The jaguar and the giant otter may prey on caimans in South America. In other parts of the world, elephants and hippopotamuses may kill crocodiles defensively. Authorities differ as to whether much cannibalism takes place among crocodilians. Adults do not normally eat their own offspring, but there is some evidence of subadults feeding on juveniles and of adults attacking subadults. Rival male Nile crocodiles sometimes kill each other during the breeding season.
Growth in hatchlings and young crocodilians depends on the food supply, and sexual maturity is linked with length rather than age. Female saltwater crocodiles reach maturity at 2.2–2.5 m (7–8 ft), while males mature at 3 m (10 ft). Australian freshwater crocodiles take ten years to reach maturity at 1.4 m (4 ft 7 in). The spectacled caiman matures earlier, reaching its mature length of 1.2 m (4 ft) in four to seven years. Crocodilians continue to grow throughout their lives. Males in particular continue to gain in weight as they get older, but this is mostly in the form of extra girth rather than length. Crocodilians can live 35–75 years, and their age can be determined by growth rings in their bones. The oldest known crocodile, which is also the largest known individual, is an Australian crocodile that has lived in captivity since 1984 and is estimated to be 120 years old.
## Interactions with humans
### Farming and ranching
Alligators and crocodiles were first farmed in the early 20th century, but the facilities involved were zoo-like and their main source of income was from tourism. By the early 1960s, the feasibility of farming these reptiles on a commercial scale was investigated in response to the decline of many crocodilian species around the world. Farming involves breeding and rearing captive stock on a self-contained basis, whereas ranching means the use of eggs, juveniles, or adults taken each year from the wild. Commercial organisations must satisfy the criteria of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) by demonstrating that, in the area concerned, they do not adversely impact the wild population.
Alligator and crocodile farming began because of demand for their hides, but now nearly all parts of the animal are put to use. The side and belly skin make the best leather, the meat is eaten, the gallbladders are valued in East Asia, and the heads are sometimes made into ornaments. In traditional Chinese medicine, alligator meat is said to cure the common cold and prevent cancer, while various internal organs are believed to have medicinal properties.
### Attacks
Crocodilians are opportunistic predators that are at their most dangerous in water and at the edge of water. Several species are known to attack humans and may do so to defend their territories, nests, or young; by mistake, while attacking domestic animals such as dogs; or for food, as larger crocodilians can take prey as big as or bigger than humans. The species on which there is most data are the saltwater crocodile, the Nile crocodile, and the American alligator. Other species which have sometimes attacked humans are the black caiman, the Morelet's crocodile, the mugger crocodile, the American crocodile, the gharial, and the freshwater crocodile.
The Nile crocodile has a reputation as the biggest killer of large animals, including humans, on the African continent. It is widely distributed, found in many habitats and cryptically coloured. From a waiting position with only its eyes and nostrils above the water, it can lunge at drinking animals, fishermen, bathers, or people collecting water or washing clothes. Once seized and dragged into the water, there is little chance for the victim to escape. Analysis of attacks show that most take place during the breeding season or when crocodiles are guarding nests or newly hatched young. Although many attacks go unreported, there are estimated to be over 300 per year, 63% of which are fatal. Wild saltwater crocodiles in Australia carried out 62 confirmed and unprovoked attacks causing injury or death between 1971 and 2004. These animals have also caused fatalities in Malaysia, New Guinea, and elsewhere. They are highly territorial and resent intrusion into their territories by other crocodiles, humans, or boats such as canoes. Attacks may come from animals of various sizes, but the larger males are generally responsible for fatalities. As their size increases, so does their need for larger mammalian prey; pigs, cattle, horses, and humans are all within the size range they seek. Most of the people attacked were either swimming or wading, but in two instances they were asleep in tents.
American alligators are recorded as making 242 unprovoked attacks between 1948 and mid-2004, causing sixteen human fatalities. Ten of these were in the water and two were on land; the circumstances of the other four are not known. Most attacks were in the warmer months of the year, though in Florida, with its warmer climate, attacks can happen at any time of year. Alligators are considered to be less aggressive than either the Nile or saltwater crocodile, but the increase in density of the human population in the Everglades has brought people and alligators into proximity and increased the risk of alligator attacks. Conversely in Mauritania, where the crocodiles' growth is severely stunted by the arid conditions, the local people swim with them without being attacked.
### As pets
Several species of crocodilian are traded as exotic pets. They are appealing when young, and pet-store owners can easily sell them, but crocodilians do not make good pets; they grow large and are both dangerous and expensive to keep. As they grow older, pet crocodilians are often abandoned by their owners, and feral populations of spectacled caimans exist in the United States and Cuba. Most countries have strict regulations for keeping these reptiles.
### In medicine
The blood of alligators and crocodiles contains peptides with antibiotic properties. According to National Geographic, these may contribute to future antibacterial drugs. Cartilage from crocodiles raised in crocodile farms is also used in research to 3D-print new cartilage for humans by mixing human stem cells with liquified crododile cartilage after proteins that may trigger the human immune system has been removed.
## Conservation
The main threat to crocodilians around the world is human activity, including hunting and habitat destruction. Early in the 1970s, more than 2 million wild crocodilian skins of a variety of species had been traded, driving down the majority of crocodilian populations, in some cases almost to extinction. Starting in 1973, CITES attempted to prevent trade in body parts of endangered animals, such as the skins of crocodiles. This proved to be problematic in the 1980s, as crocodiles were abundant and dangerous to humans in some parts of Africa, and it was legal to hunt them. At the Conference of the Parties in Botswana in 1983, it was argued on behalf of aggrieved local people that it was reasonable to sell the lawfully hunted skins. In the late 1970s, crocodiles began to be farmed in different countries, started from eggs taken from the wild. By the 1980s, farmed crocodile skins were produced in sufficient numbers to destroy the unlawful trade in wild crocodilians. By 2000, skins from twelve crocodilian species, whether harvested lawfully in the wild or farmed, were traded by thirty countries, and the unlawful trade in the products had almost vanished.
The gharial has undergone a chronic long-term decline, combined with a rapid short-term decline, leading the IUCN to list the species as critically endangered. In 1946, the gharial population had been widespread, numbering around 5,000 to 10,000; by 2006, however, it had declined 96–98%, reduced to a small number of widely spaced subpopulations of fewer than 235 individuals. This long-term decline had a number of causes, including egg collection and hunting, such as for indigenous medicine. The rapid decline of about 58% between 1997 and 2006 was caused by increasing use of gill nets and the loss of riverine habitat. The gharial population continues to be threatened by environmental hazards such as heavy metals and protozoan parasites, but as of 2013 numbers are rising, due to the protection of nests against egg predators. The Chinese alligator was historically widespread throughout the eastern Yangtze River system but is currently restricted to some areas in southeastern Anhui province thanks to habitat fragmentation and degradation. The wild population is believed to exist only in small fragmented ponds. In 1972, the species was declared a Class I endangered species by the Chinese government and received the maximum amount of legal protection. Since 1979, captive breeding programs were established in China and North America, creating a healthy captive population. In 2008, alligators bred in the Bronx Zoo were successfully reintroduced to Chongming Island. The Philippine crocodile is perhaps the most threatened crocodilian and is considered by the IUCN to be critically endangered. Hunting and destructive fishing habits have reduced its population to around 100 individuals by 2009. In the same year, 50 captive bred crocodiles were released into the wild to help boost the population. Support from local people is crucial for the species' survival.
The American alligator has also suffered serious declines from hunting and habitat loss throughout its range, threatening it with extinction. In 1967 it was listed as an endangered species, but the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and state wildlife agencies in the Southern United States stepped in and worked towards its recovery. Protection allowed the species to recuperate, and in 1987 it was removed from the endangered species list. Much research into alligator ranching has been undertaken at the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, a large area of marshland in the state of Louisiana. The resulting data has increased understanding of penning, stocking rates, egg incubation, hatching, rearing, and diet, and this information has been used at other establishments around the world. Income from the alligators kept at Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge contributes to conservation of the marshland. A study examining alligator farms in the United States showed that they have generated significant conservation gains, and poaching of wild alligators has greatly diminished.
## Cultural depictions
### In mythology, religion, and folklore
Crocodilians have had prominent roles in the myths and legends of various cultures around the world and may even have inspired stories of dragons. In Ancient Egyptian religion, Ammit, the demoniac devourer of unworthy souls, and Sobek, the god of power, protection, and fertility, are both represented as having crocodile heads. This reflects the Egyptians' view of the crocodile both as a terrifying predator and an important part of the Nile ecosystem. The crocodile was one of several animals that the Egyptians mummified. Crocodiles were also associated with various water deities by peoples of West Africa. During the Benin Empire, crocodiles were considered the "policemen of the waters" and symbolised the power of the king or oba to punish wrongdoers. The Leviathan described in the Book of Job may have been based on a crocodile. In Mesoamerica, the Aztecs had a crocodilian god of fertility named Cipactli who protected crops. In Aztec mythology, the earth deity Tlaltecuhtli is sometimes represented as a crocodile-like monster. The Maya also associated crocodilians with fertility and death.
The gharial is featured in the folk tales of India. In one story, a gharial and a monkey become friends when the monkey gives the gharial fruit but friendship ends after the gharial confess they tried to lure him into this house to eat him. Similar stories exist in Native American legends, and in the African American folktale of an alligator and Br'er Rabbit. In a popular Malay folk tale, a mouse deer tricks a group of crocodiles into becoming a bridge for him to cross a river without eating him. A legend from East Timor tells how a boy rescues a gigantic crocodile that becomes stranded. In return, the crocodile protects him for the rest of its life, and when it dies, its scaly ridged back becomes the hills of Timor. One Australian Dreamtime story tells of a crocodile ancestor who had fire all to himself. One day, a "rainbow bird" stole fire-sticks from the crocodile and gave it to man. Hence the crocodile lives in water.
### In literature
Ancient historians have described crocodilians from the earliest historical records, though often their descriptions contain as much legend as fact. The Ancient Greek historian Herodotus (c. 440 BC) described the crocodile in detail, though much of his description is fanciful; he claimed that it would lie with its mouth open to permit a "trochilus" bird (possibly an Egyptian plover) to enter and remove any leeches it found. The crocodile was one of the beasts described in the late-13th century Rochester Bestiary, based on classical sources, including Pliny's Historia naturalis (c. 79 AD) and Isidore of Seville's Etymologies. Isidore asserts that the crocodile is named for its saffron colour (Latin croceus, 'saffron'), and that it is often twenty cubits (10 m (33 ft)) long. He further claimed that the crocodile may be killed by fish with serrated crests sawing into its soft underbelly, and that the male and female take turns guarding the eggs.
Crocodiles have been reputed to weep for their victims since the 9th century Bibliotheca by Photios I of Constantinople. The story was repeated in later accounts such as that of Bartholomeus Anglicus in the 13th century. It became widely known in 1400 when the English traveller Sir John Mandeville wrote his description of "cockodrills":
"In that country [of Prester John] and by all Ind [India] be great plenty of cockodrills, that is a manner of a long serpent, as I have said before. And in the night they dwell in the water, and on the day upon the land, in rocks and in caves. And they eat no meat in all the winter, but they lie as in a dream, as do the serpents. These serpents slay men, and they eat them weeping; and when they eat they move the over jaw, and not the nether jaw, and they have no tongue."
Crocodilians, especially the crocodile, have been recurring characters in stories for children throughout the modern era. Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) contains the poem How Doth the Little Crocodile, a parody of a moralising poem by Isaac Watts, Against Idleness and Mischief. In J. M. Barrie's novel Peter and Wendy (1911), the character Captain Hook has lost his hand to the crocodile. Hook fears the crocodile, but is warned of its approach by the ticking of a clock which it has swallowed. In Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories (1902), the Elephant's Child acquires his trunk by having his (short) nose pulled very hard by the Crocodile "on the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River". The newly elongated nose allows him to pick fruit instead of waiting for it to fall, and to do many other useful things. Roald Dahl's The Enormous Crocodile (1978), illustrated by Quentin Blake, tells how a crocodile wanders the jungle looking for children to eat, trying one trick after another. In Andrew Fusek Peters' story book, Monkey's Clever Tale, a crocodile is tricked by a monkey. The monkey asks the crocodile to carry it across a river, promising to give its tail to eat in return, but escaped with the tail intact.
### In media
In film and television, crocodilians are often represented as dangerous obstacles in action/adventure movies like Live and Let Die (1973) and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) or as monstrous man-eaters in horror films like Eaten Alive (1977), Alligator (1980), Lake Placid (1999), Crocodile (2000), Primeval (2007) and Black Water (2007). In the film Crocodile Dundee, the title character's nickname comes from the animal that bit off his leg. Some media have attempted to portray these reptiles in more positive or educational light, such as Steve Irwin's wildlife documentary series The Crocodile Hunter.
## See also
- Phytosaurs
|
12,471,589 |
Brazza's martin
| 1,133,300,310 |
Species of bird found in Africa
|
[
"Birds described in 1886",
"Birds of Central Africa",
"Hirundinidae",
"Taxa named by Émile Oustalet",
"Taxonomy articles created by Polbot"
] |
Brazza's martin (Phedinopsis brazzae) is a passerine bird in the swallow family, Hirundinidae. It is 12 centimeters (4.7 in) long with grey-brown upperparts, heavily black-streaked white underparts, and a brownish tint to the breast plumage. The sexes are similar, but juvenile birds have more diffuse breast streaking and reddish-brown edges to the feathers of the back and wings. The song consists of a series of short notes of increasing frequency, followed by a complex buzz that is sometimes completed by a number of clicks.
The range of this species falls within the African countries of Angola, the Republic of the Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nesting in burrows in river banks, it lays a clutch of three white eggs. This bird feeds on flying insects, including termites, and may hunt over rivers or open savanna. It forms mixed flocks with other swallows, but is readily identified by its combination of brown upperparts, streaked underparts, and square tail.
Although this little-known bird had been classified as data deficient by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), it actually appears to be common and widespread, and it has been listed as a species of Least Concern since 2008. There may be some hunting of this martin for food, but the species does not appear to be facing any serious short-term threats.
## Taxonomy
The Brazza's martin was first described in 1886 under the binomial name Phedina brazzae by the French zoologist Émile Oustalet from a specimen obtained at Nganchu in the Ngabé District of what is now the Republic of Congo. This martin is now the only species placed in the genus Phedinopsis that was introduced in 1971 by the German ornithologist Hans Edmund Wolters. The genus name, Phedinopsis, combines the genus Phedina with the Ancient Greek opsis meaning "appearance". The species name commemorates Italian-born French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, later to become governor-general of the French Congo, who collected the type specimen. This species was often called the "Congo martin", but this invites confusion with the Congo sand martin or Congo martin, Riparia congica.
Brazza's martin is a member of the swallow family of birds, and is classed as a member of the Hirundininae subfamily, which comprises all swallows and martins except the very distinctive river martins. DNA sequence studies suggest that there are three major groupings within the Hirundininae, broadly correlating with the type of nest built. These groups are the "core martins", including burrowing species like the sand martin; the "nest-adopters", which are birds like the tree swallow that use natural cavities; and the "mud nest builders", such as the barn swallow, which build a nest from mud. The species nests in burrows and therefore belong to the "core martins" group.
Brazza's martin is thought to be an early offshoot from the main swallow lineage, although the striped plumage suggests a distant relationship with several streaked African Hirundo species. Brazza's martin was previously included in the genus Phedina, although it is now included in its own genus Phedinopsis due to the significant differences in vocalisations and nest type from its relative.
## Description
The Brazza's martin is 12 cm (4.7 in) long with wings averaging 100.5 mm (3.96 in). This small hirundine has grey-brown upperparts with a somewhat darker brown head and white underparts heavily streaked with blackish-brown from the throat to vent. There is a brownish tint to the breast plumage. The square tail averages 46.8 mm (1.84 in) long and has white edges to the brown undertail coverts. The flight feathers are blackish-brown and the bill and legs are black. The eyes are dark brown and the black bill averages 8.5 mm (0.33 in) long. The sexes are similar, but juvenile birds have more diffuse breast streaking and reddish-brown or buff edges to the feathers of the back and wings. This bird has no subspecies.
The song consists of a series of short notes increasing in frequency which are followed by a complex buzz and sometimes completed by a number of clicks. The song becomes increasingly loud, although the final clicks are quite soft. The song is similar to that of the banded martin, and does not resemble the Mascarene martin, suggesting unresolved taxonomic problems. The flight is variously described as heavy, or like that of a sand martin.
Brazza's martin can be distinguished from most other swallows within its range by the heavy streaking on the underparts. Although the lesser striped swallow also has white underparts with dark streaking, it is larger, has a deeply forked tail and a very different plumage, with dark blue upperparts, a red rump and a chestnut head. Compared to the Mascarene martin, this species is smaller, has a plainer back and finer dashing on the throat and chest, but there is no range overlap.
## Distribution and habitat
The distribution of the Brazza's martin was initially poorly known, and until 1922 the type specimen in the Paris Museum was the only recorded example of this species. A Father Callewaert then collected 20 martins near Luluabourg (now Kananga), and this bird is now known to breed in the south of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Republic of the Congo, and in northern Angola. There is one probable sighting from southeast Gabon.
In the breeding season this martin is found near rivers with the steep banks that are needed for the nest burrows. Suitable habitat occurs along lowland tropical rivers like the Congo or rivers with sandbanks in the highlands of Angola. The highland locations have wide grassy riverways running through miombo woodlands, whereas the Congo Basin is tropical forest with over 200 cm (80 in) of rain a year. The lowland habitats are a patchwork of dry, seasonally flooded and permanently wet woodland, and seasonally flooded savanna, and the swamp forests contain trees such as Symphonia globulifera, raffia palms and Mitragyna species, and the riverbanks are often lined with arrowroot. This martin seems to be able to adapt to open savanna habitats containing Hymenocardia acida, in which it will roost overnight when not breeding, and is therefore not heavily dependent on the neighbouring forests as long as the riverine breeding sites survive.
## Behaviour
In a presumed example of courtship behaviour, a male Brazza's martin perched about 30 cm (1 ft) away from a female and sang for about ten minutes. As it sang, the male leant towards the female, which caused the still-folded wings and tail to rise relative to the body. The Brazza's martin nests in the vertical banks of forested rivers from July to October, at the end of the dry season but before the river levels are high enough to cause flooding. A small colony of four pairs was recorded breeding near a rocky outcrop on the side of a valley.
The Brazza's martin nests singly or in loose colonies with sometimes widely separated burrows. The nest is a small heap of soft material such as feathers or dry grass at the end of a typically 50 cm (20 in) tunnel. The normal clutch is three white eggs. The eggs measure 18.5 mm × 11.25 mm (0.728 in × 0.443 in) and weigh 1.5 g (0.05 oz). The incubation and fledging times are unknown, although as with all hirundines the chicks are altricial, hatching naked and blind.
As with other swallows, Brazza's martin feeds on flying insects, including termites, and may hunt over rivers or open savanna. It can occur in single-species flocks or with other swallows including barn swallows, lesser striped swallows, or rock martins.
## Status
There has been little ornithological research in this part of Africa, and until 2008 the Brazza's martin was classified as data deficient. It was thought to have a much more restricted distribution range, but a 2007 paper presented evidence that extended its known range by 500 km (300 mi) to the north and 175 km (100 mi) southwards, a quadrupling of the area. It has a large range of 402,000 km<sup>2</sup> (155,000 sq mi) although the total population is unknown. Its extensive range and apparently stable population means this bird is classed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.
It is likely that this species is dug out for food by humans, but its small, dispersed colonies in firm soil suggest that it is a less rewarding target than the densely packed sandbank nests of species such as the African river martin and rosy bee-eater. Breeding colonies in river sandbars are liable to flooding, but neither natural causes nor hunting appears to be having a serious impact, and this species seems under no immediate threat. Its ability to use degraded habitats also aids its survival. The Brazza's martin is not a protected species in Angola, the DRC, or the Republic of Congo.
## Cited texts and general references
|
34,495,550 |
This Dust Was Once the Man
| 1,113,276,211 |
1871 elegiac poem by Walt Whitman about Abraham Lincoln
|
[
"1871 poems",
"Abraham Lincoln in art",
"Poetry by Walt Whitman",
"Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln"
] |
"This Dust Was Once the Man" is a brief elegy written by Walt Whitman in 1871. It was dedicated to Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, whom Whitman greatly admired. The poem was written six years after Lincoln's assassination. Whitman had written three previous poems about Lincoln, all in 1865: "O Captain! My Captain!", "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and "Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day".
The poem has not attracted much individual attention, though it was positively received and has been analyzed several times. The poem describes Lincoln as having saved the union of the United States from "the foulest crime in history", a line for which conflicting interpretations exist. It is generally seen as referring to either the secession of the Confederate States of America, slavery, or the assassination of Lincoln.
## Background
Although they never met, the poet Walt Whitman saw Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, several times between 1861 and 1865, sometimes in close quarters. Whitman first noticed what Whitman scholar Gregory Eiselein describes as the president-elect's "striking appearance" and "unpretentious dignity". Whitman wrote that he trusted Lincoln's "supernatural tact" and "idiomatic Western genius". His admiration for Lincoln grew in the years that followed; Whitman wrote in October 1863, "I love the President personally." Whitman considered himself and Lincoln to be "afloat in the same stream" and "rooted in the same ground". Whitman and Lincoln shared similar views on slavery and the Union, and similarities have been noted in their literary styles and inspirations. Whitman later declared that "Lincoln gets almost nearer me than anybody else." As president, Lincoln led the Union through the American Civil War.
There is an account of Lincoln reading Whitman's Leaves of Grass poetry collection in his office, and another of the president saying "Well, he looks like a man!" upon seeing Whitman in Washington, D.C., but these accounts may be fictitious. Lincoln's assassination in mid-April 1865 greatly moved Whitman, who wrote several poems in tribute to the fallen president. "O Captain! My Captain!", "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", "Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day", and "This Dust Was Once the Man" were all written as sequels to Whitman's collection of poetry Drum-Taps. The poems do not specifically mention Lincoln, although they turn the assassination of the president into a sort of martyrdom.
## Text
> > This dust was once the Man, Gentle, plain, just and resolute—under whose cautious hand, Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age, Was saved the Union of These States.
## Publication history
Whitman wrote the poem in 1871 and published it in the "President Lincoln's Burial Hymn" cluster of Passage to India, a poetry collection intended as a supplement to Leaves of Grass. It was republished in the "Memories of President Lincoln" cluster, first in the 1871–1872 edition of Leaves of Grass. It is the only poem in this cluster that did not first appear in the poetry collections Drum-Taps or Sequel to Drum-Taps. The poem was not revised after its first publication.
## Analysis
In contrast to Whitman's earlier poems on Lincoln, which describe him as a leader, as a friend, or as "a wise and sweet soul", here he is described as simply dust. The literary critic Helen Vendler considers it Lincoln's epitaph. Whitman "grasps the dust to himself". She then argues that the epitaph is unbalanced. Half of the poem's meaning is contained in "this dust", and the following thirty words constitute the other half. She notes that dust is light, while Lincoln himself holds "complex historical weight". In the second line, Vendler notes the difference between 'gentle', which she considers a "personal" word, and the final, "official", descriptor of 'resolute'. She considers it surprising that Lincoln is never described by an active verb, but instead as primus inter pares, the 'cautious' guiding hand of the nation.
Whitman writes in the third line: "the foulest crime in history known in any land or age." The phrase "foulest crime" likely came from Herman Melville's Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War. While Melville is generally considered to have been referring to slavery, Whitman scholar Ed Folsom wrote, in 2019, that Whitman's "foulest crime" is viewed not as slavery but either as Lincoln's assassination or the secession of the Confederate States of America; he earlier wrote that the latter interpretation was favored by Whitman scholars. After arguing in favor of the secession interpretation, Edward W. Huffstetler wrote in The Walt Whitman Encyclopedia that "This Dust" expresses Whitman's most "bitter tone" on the South. In Lincoln and The Poets, William Wilson Betts wrote in favor of the assassination of Lincoln as being the "foulest crime", and in contrast, Vendler writes that Whitman's use of "foulest crime" is a euphemism to refer to slavery. Roy Morris, a historian of the Civil War era, considers the crime to be "a heartbreaking civil war that filled the hospitals of the capital with the ruined bodies of beautiful young soldiers."
In Secular Lyric, the English professor John Michael draws comparisons between the poem and the Book of Common Prayer, saying that the poem emphasizes the "materiality of the body" and conveys grief through "understatement" by not using standard rhetorical methods to convey feeling. To Michael, referencing Lincoln's preservation of the Union makes his assassination more meaningful. Michael particularly highlights the simplicity of describing Lincoln as dust, noting that Whitman does not rely on metaphors or other poetical devices to convey Lincoln's death, as opposed to "O Captain! My Captain!" which utilizes the ship of state metaphor and makes Lincoln into a quasi-religious figure. Instead, Whitman forces the reader to face the harsh reality of death, as Lincoln has been reduced to dust.
The literary scholar Deak Nabers notes that Whitman does not mention emancipation in the epitaph and is careful not to attribute the saving of the Union to Lincoln himself, instead saying that it was preserved "under [Lincoln's] hand". Nabers draws comparisons between the poem and Melville's poem "The House-Top" and William Wells Brown's novel Clotel. The final line of the poem inverts the standard "United States was saved" to "Was saved the Union of these States", which Vendler concludes syntactically places the Union at the climax of the poem. Vendler concludes her analysis by saying that the poem has "Roman succinctness and taciturnity" and makes "dust [...] equal in weight to the salvation of the Union".
## Reception
In 1943, literary critic Henry Seidel Canby wrote that Whitman's poems on Lincoln have become known as "the poems of Lincoln" and noted the "fine lines" of "This Dust". William E. Barton wrote in 1965 that without the success of "O Captain" and "Lilacs", "This Dust" and "Hush'd be the Camps" would have attracted little attention and added little to Whitman's reputation. The philosopher Martha Nussbaum considers the epitaph "one of Whitman's simplest and most eloquent statements". In 1965 Ramsey Clark, the United States attorney general, read part of the poem to a subcommittee of the United States House Committee on the Judiciary during a hearing on creating penalties for assassination of the president in the aftermath of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
## See also
- Cultural depictions of Abraham Lincoln
|
21,213,398 |
Horses in World War I
| 1,159,116,297 |
Use of horses during World War I (1914–1918)
|
[
"Cavalry",
"Horse history and evolution",
"Military animals",
"Military animals of World War I",
"Warhorses",
"Working horses"
] |
The use of horses in World War I marked a transitional period in the evolution of armed conflict. Cavalry units were initially considered essential offensive elements of a military force, but over the course of the war, the vulnerability of horses to modern machine gun, mortar, and artillery fire reduced their utility on the battlefield. This paralleled the development of tanks, which ultimately replaced cavalry in shock tactics. While the perceived value of the horse in war changed dramatically, horses still played a significant role throughout the war.
All of the major combatants in World War I (1914–1918) began the conflict with cavalry forces. Imperial Germany stopped using them on the Western Front soon after the war began, but continued with limited use on the Eastern Front, well into the war. The Ottoman Empire used cavalry extensively during the war. On the Allied side, the United Kingdom used mounted infantry and cavalry charges throughout the war, but the United States used cavalry only briefly. Although not particularly successful on the Western Front, Allied cavalry had some success in the Middle Eastern theatre due to the open nature of the front, allowing a more traditional war of movement, in addition to the lower concentration of artillery and machine guns. Russia used cavalry forces on the Eastern Front but with limited success.
The military used horses mainly for logistical support; they were better than mechanized vehicles at traveling through deep mud and over rough terrain. Horses were used for reconnaissance and for carrying messengers as well as for pulling artillery, ambulances, and supply wagons. The presence of horses often increased morale among the soldiers at the front, but the animals contributed to disease and poor sanitation in camps, caused by their manure and carcasses. The value of horses and the increasing difficulty of replacing them were such that by 1917, some troops were told that the loss of a horse was of greater tactical concern than the loss of a human soldier. Ultimately, the blockade of Germany prevented the Central Powers from importing horses to replace those lost, which contributed to Germany's defeat. By the end of the war, even the well-supplied US Army was short of horses.
Conditions were severe for horses at the front; they were killed by artillery fire, suffered from skin disorders, and were injured by poison gas. Hundreds of thousands of horses died, and many more were treated at veterinary hospitals and sent back to the front. Procuring fodder was a major issue, and Germany lost many horses to starvation. Several memorials have been erected to commemorate the horses that died. Artists, including Alfred Munnings, extensively documented the work of horses in the war, and horses were featured in war poetry. Novels, plays and documentaries have also featured the horses of World War I.
## Cavalry
Many British tacticians outside of the cavalry units realized before the war that advances in technology meant that the era of mounted warfare was coming to an end. However, many senior cavalry officers disagreed, and despite limited usefulness, maintained cavalry regiments at the ready throughout the war. Scarce wartime resources were used to train and maintain cavalry regiments that were rarely used. The continued tactical use of the cavalry charge resulted in the loss of many troops and horses in fruitless attacks against machine guns. Early in the war, cavalry skirmishes occurred on several fronts, and horse-mounted troops were widely used for reconnaissance. Britain's cavalry were trained to fight both on foot and mounted, but most other European cavalry solely relied on the shock tactic of mounted charges. There were isolated instances of successful shock combat on the Western Front, where cavalry divisions also provided important mobile firepower. Beginning before the war, cavalry was deployed alongside armoured cars and aircraft, this was later extended to working in co-operation with tanks, notably at the Battle of Cambrai, where cavalry was expected to exploit breakthroughs in the lines that the slower tanks could not. This plan never came to fruition due to missed opportunities by command. At Cambrai, troops from Great Britain, Canada, India and Germany participated in mounted actions. Cavalry was still deployed late in the war, with Allied cavalry troops harassing retreating German forces in 1918 during the Hundred Days Offensive, when horses and tanks continued to be used in the same battles. "Cavalry was literally indispensable" on the Eastern front and in the Middle East.
The Cavalry Manual, written in 1912, was unchanged throughout the war as the tactics within were still effective, more so than many authors and commentators have given credit for. The ambitions of senior officers however, Haig in particular, was that the cavalry arm could also be effective strategically. This was proven to be wrong and the blame is laid with the higher echelons who were unable to establish a Command, Control and Communications structure which could effectively involve the use of cavalry divisions or corps. Cavalry was also used with good effect in Palestine, at the Third Battle of Gaza and Battle of Megiddo. British cavalry officers, far more than their continental European counterparts, persisted in using and maintaining cavalry, believing that mounted troops would be useful for exploiting infantry breakthroughs, and under the right circumstances would be able to face machine guns.
### British Empire
#### United Kingdom
Britain had increased its cavalry reserves after seeing the effectiveness of mounted Boers during the Second Boer War (1899–1902). Horse-mounted units were used from the earliest days of World War I: on August 22, 1914, the first British shot of the war in France was fired by a cavalryman, Corporal Edward Thomas of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards, near Casteau, during a patrol in the buildup to the Battle of Mons. Within 19 days of Britain beginning mobilization for war, on August 24, 1914, the 9th Lancers, a cavalry regiment led by David Campbell, engaged German troops with a squadron of 4th Dragoon Guards against German infantry and guns. Campbell obeyed his orders to charge, although he believed the more prudent course of action would have been to fight dismounted. The charge resulted in a British loss of 250 men and 300 horses. On September 7, Campbell's troops charged again, this time towards the German 1st Guard Dragoons, another lancer cavalry regiment.
The Cavalry Training Manual of 1912 continued to be used by junior commanders to great effect (significantly Douglas Haig was a contributor) and wasn't changed significantly during the war years. What did change however, to the advantage of small cavalry formations, was how the German army changed tactics (to deep defence) allowing the cavalry more freedom on the battlefield. The last British fatality from enemy action before the armistice went into effect was a cavalryman, George Edwin Ellison, from C Troop 5th Royal Irish Lancers. Ellison was shot by a sniper as the regiment moved into Mons on November 11, 1918.
Horses proved indispensable to the British war effort in Palestine, particularly under Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, for whom cavalry made up a large percentage of his forces. Most of his mounted troops were not British regular cavalry, but the Desert Mounted Corps, consisting of a combination of Australian, New Zealand, Indian units and English Yeomanry regiments from the Territorial Force, largely equipped as mounted infantry rather than cavalry. By mid-1918, Ottoman intelligence estimated that Allenby commanded around 11,000 cavalry. Allenby's forces routed the Ottoman armies in a running series of battles that included the extensive use of cavalry by both sides. Some cavalry tacticians view this action as a vindication of cavalry's usefulness, but others point out that the Ottoman were outnumbered two to one by late 1918, and were not first-class troops. Horses were also ridden by the British officers of the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps in Egypt and the Levant during the Sinai and Palestine Campaigns.
It is clear that between 1914 and 1918 the cavalry were effective in combat at a tactical level, in spite of the prevailing conditions of the battlefield (or as effective as their infantry counterparts, at any rate). The premise that cavalry were incapable of moving around on the battlefields of the Western Front is simply false. Advance planning was required but this was the case for all arms in the advance.
The origin of much of the discriminatory comments about cavalry on the Western Front is attributed to General Sir James Edmonds, an engineer officer who was responsible for writing much of the official history of the war. The main and recurring statements attributable to him are:
♦ The "cavalry generals" myth - that the British Army on the Western Front was dominated by general officers from the cavalry arm.
♦ The "Last Machine Gun Myth" which incorrectly stated that cavalry couldn't operate until the last machine gun was destroyed.
♦ The "Fodder" myth which stated that cavalry resources would have been better spent in the supply of other arms.
Additionally writers such as J. F. C. Fuller and B. H. Liddell Hart were enthusiastic exponents of tank warfare and used similar statements to discredit cavalry as "traditional and outdated"
The curious aspect of these allegations is that, despite being proven wrong on many occasions over the decades since WW1, these myths persist in the psyche of some authors and indeed with the general public.
#### India
Indian cavalry participated in actions on both the Western and Palestinian fronts throughout the war. Members of the 1st and 2nd Indian Cavalry Divisions were active on the Western Front, including in the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line and at the Battle of Cambrai. During the battle of the Somme, the 20th Deccan Horse made a successful, mounted charge, assaulting a German position on Bazentin Ridge. The charge overran the German position. A charge by the 5th (Mhow) Cavalry Brigade of the 1st Division ended successfully at the Battle of Cambrai despite being against a position fortified by barbed wire and machine guns. Such successful endings were unusual occurrences during the war. Several Indian cavalry divisions joined Allenby's troops in the spring of 1918 after being transferred from the Western Front.
#### Canada
When the war began, Lord Strathcona's Horse, a Canadian cavalry regiment, was mobilized and sent to England for training. The regiment served as infantry in French trenches during 1915, and were not returned to their mounted status until February 16, 1916. In the defense of the Somme front in March 1917, mounted troops saw action, and Lieutenant Frederick Harvey was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions. Canadian cavalry generally had the same difficulties as other nations in breaking trench warfare deadlocks and were of little use on the front lines. However, in the spring of 1918, Canadian cavalry was essential in halting the last major German offensive of the war. On March 30, 1918, Canadian cavalry charged German positions in the Battle of Moreuil Wood, defeating a superior German force supported by machine gun fire. The charge was made by Lord Strathcona's Horse, led by Gordon Flowerdew, later posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions during the charge. Although the German forces surrendered, three-quarters of the 100 cavalry participating in the attack were killed or wounded in the attack against 300 German soldiers.
#### Australia and New Zealand
The Australian and New Zealand Mounted Division (known as the ANZAC Mounted Division) was formed in Egypt in 1916, after the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) was disbanded. Comprising four brigades, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Australian Light Horse and the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade. All had fought at Gallipoli dismounted. In August the division's dynamic capabilities were effectively combined with the static 52nd (Lowland) Infantry Division at the Battle of Romani, where they repelled an attempted Ottoman attack on the Suez Canal. This victory stopped the advance of Kress von Kressenstein's Expeditionary Force (3rd Infantry Division and Pasha I formation) towards the Suez Canal and forced his withdrawal under pressure. An Ottoman garrison at Magdhaba was defeated in December 1916 by the division with the Imperial Camel Corps Brigade attached and the other major Ottoman fortification at Rafah was captured in January 1917. They participated mounted in the First Battle of Gaza in March, and the Third Battle of Gaza (including the Battle of Beersheba) in October 1917. They attacked dismounted in the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917. In 1918, the ANZAC and Australian Mounted Divisions, along with the Yeomanry Mounted Division in the Desert Mounted Corps, conducted two attacks across the Jordan River to Amman in March, then moved on to Es Salt in April. The Australian Mounted Division were armed with swords mid year, and as part of the Battle of Megiddo captured Amman (capturing 10,300 prisoners), Nazareth, Jenin and Samakh in nine days. After the Armistice they participated in the reoccupation of Gallipoli in December.
The ANZAC and Australian Mounted Divisions carried rifles, bayonets and machine guns, generally using horses as swift transport and dismounting to fight. Troops of four men were organised, so that three were fighting while the fourth held the horses. Sometimes they fought as mounted troops: at the Battle of Beersheba during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in 1917, the Australian Mounted Division's 4th Light Horse Brigade made what is sometimes called "the last successful cavalry charge in history", when two regiments successfully overran Ottoman trenches. They formed up over a wide area, to avoid offering a target for enemy artillery, and galloped 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) into machine gun fire, equipped only with rifles and bayonets. Some of the front ranks fell, but most of the brigade broke through, their horses jumping the trenches into the enemy camp. Some soldiers dismounted to fight in the trenches, while others raced on to Beersheba, to capture the town and its vital water supplies. The charge was "instrumental in securing Allenby's victory [in Palestine]".
The Australians primarily rode Waler horses. The English cavalry officer, Lieutenant Colonel RMP Preston DSO, summed up the animals' performance in his book, The Desert Mounted Corps:
> ... (November 16th, 1917) The operations had now continued for 17 days practically without cessation, and a rest was absolutely necessary especially for the horses. Cavalry Division had covered nearly 170 miles ... and their horses had been watered on an average of once in every 36 hours ... The heat, too, had been intense and the short rations, 9+1⁄2 lb of grain per day without bulk food, had weakened them greatly. Indeed, the hardship endured by some horses was almost incredible. One of the batteries of the Australian Mounted Division had only been able to water its horses three times in the last nine days—the actual intervals being 68, 72 and 76 hours respectively. Yet this battery on its arrival had lost only eight horses from exhaustion, not counting those killed in action or evacuated wounded ... The majority of horses in the Corps were Walers and there is no doubt that these hardy Australian horses make the finest cavalry mounts in the world ...
### Continental Europe
Before the war began, many continental European armies still considered the cavalry to hold a vital place in their order of battle. France and Russia expanded their mounted military units before 1914. Of the Central Powers, Germany added thirteen regiments of mounted riflemen, Austria–Hungary expanded their forces, and the Bulgarian army also readied the cavalry in their army. When the Germans invaded in August 1914, the Belgians had one division of cavalry.
French cavalry had similar problems with horses on the Western Front as the British, although the treatment of their horses created additional difficulties. Opinion generally was that the French were poor horsemen: "The French cavalryman of 1914 sat on his horse beautifully, but was no horsemaster. It did not occur to him to get off his horse's back whenever he could, so there were thousands of animals with sore backs ...". One French general, Jean-François Sordet, was accused of not letting horses have access to water in hot weather. By late August 1914, a sixth of the horses in the French cavalry were unusable. The French continued to eschew mounted warfare when in a June 1918 charge by French lancers the horses were left behind and the men charged on foot.
Russia possessed thirty-six cavalry divisions when it entered the war in 1914, and the Russian government claimed that its horsemen would thrust deep into the heart of Germany. Although Russian mounted troops entered Germany, they were soon met by German forces. In the August 1914 Battle of Tannenberg, troops led by German Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and Lieutenant-General Erich Ludendorff surrounded the Russian Second Army and destroyed the mounted force of Don Cossacks that served as the special guard of Russian General Alexander Samsonov. Other Russian cavalry units successfully harassed retreating Austro-Hungarian troops in September 1914, with the running battle eventually resulting in the loss of 40,000 of the 50,000 men in the Austro-Hungarian XIV Tyrolean Corps, which included the 6th Mounted Rifle Regiment. Transporting cavalry created a hardship for the already strained Russian infrastructure, as the great distances they needed to be moved meant that they had to be transported by train. Approximately the same number of trains (about 40) were required to transport a cavalry division of 4,000 as to transport an infantry division of 16,000.
The cavalries of the Central Powers, Germany and Austria–Hungary, faced the same problems with transport and the failure of tactics as the Russians. Germany initially made extensive use of cavalry, including a lance-against-lance battle with the British in late 1914, and an engagement between the British 1st Cavalry Brigade and the German 4th Cavalry Division in the lead-up to the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914. That battle ended "decidedly to the disadvantages of the German cavalry", partially due to the use of artillery by the accompanying British L Battery of horse artillery. The Germans stopped using cavalry on the Western Front not long after the beginning of the war, in response to the Allied Forces' changing battle tactics, including more advanced weaponry. They continued to use cavalry to some extent on the Eastern Front, including probes into Russian territory in early 1915. The Austrians were forced to stop using cavalry because of large-scale equipment failures; Austrian military saddles were so poorly designed as to rub the skin off the back of any horse not already hardened to the equipment from parade ground practice; only a few weeks into the war half of all Austrian cavalry mounts were disabled, and the rest nearly so.
### Ottoman Empire
In 1914, the Ottoman Empire began the war with one cavalry regiment in their armed forces and four reserve regiments (originally formed in 1912) under the control of the Third Army. These reserve regiments were composed of Kurds, rural Turks and a few Armenians. The performance of the reserve divisions was poor, and in March 1915 the forces that survived were turned into two divisions totalling only two thousand men and seventy officers. Later that month, the best regiments were consolidated into one division and the rest disbanded. Nonetheless, cavalry was used by Ottoman forces throughout 1915 in engagements with the Russians, and one cavalry unit even exchanged small arms fire with a submarine crew in the Dardanelles in early 1915. Ottoman cavalry was used in engagements with the Allies, including the Third Battle of Gaza in late 1917. In this battle, both sides used cavalry forces as strategic parts of their armies. Cavalry continued to be involved in engagements well into 1918, including in conflicts near the Jordan River in April and May that year, which the Ottomans called the First and Second Battles of Jordan, part of the lead-up to the Battle of Megiddo. By September 1918, regular army cavalry forces were stationed throughout the Middle Eastern front, and the only remaining operationally ready reserve forces in the Ottoman military were two cavalry divisions, one formed after the initial problems in 1915.
### United States
By 1916, the United States Cavalry consisted of 15,424 members organized into 15 regiments, including headquarters, supply, machine-gun and rifle troops. Just before formally joining the war effort, the US had gained significant experience in 1916 and 1917 during the Pancho Villa Expedition in Mexico, which helped to prepare the US Cavalry for entry into World War I. In May 1917, a month after the US declaration of war, the National Defense Act went into effect, creating the 18th through the 25th US Cavalry regiments, and later that month, twenty more cavalry regiments were created. However, British experiences during the first years of the war showed that trench warfare and weapons that included machine guns and artillery made cavalry warfare impractical. Thus, on October 1, eight of the new cavalry regiments were converted to field artillery regiments by order of Congress, and by August 1918, twenty National Army horse units were converted to thirty-nine trench mortar and artillery batteries. Some horse units of the 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 15th Cavalry regiments accompanied the US forces in Europe. The soldiers worked mainly as grooms and farriers, attending to remounts for the artillery, medical corps and transport services. It was not until late August 1918 that US cavalry entered combat. A provisional squadron of 418 officers and enlisted men, representing the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, and mounted on convalescent horses, was created to serve as scouts and couriers during the St. Mihiel Offensive. On September 11, 1918, these troops rode at night through no man's land and penetrated five miles behind German lines. Once there, the cavalry was routed and had to return to Allied territory. Despite serving through the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, by mid-October the squadron was removed from the front with only 150 of its men remaining.
## Logistical support
Horses were used extensively for military trains. They were used to pull ambulances, carry supplies and ordnance. At the beginning of the war, the German army depended upon horses to pull its field kitchens, as well as the ammunition wagons for artillery brigades. The Royal Corps of Signals used horses to pull cable wagons, and the promptness of messengers and dispatch riders depended on their mounts. Horses often drew artillery and steady animals were crucial to artillery effectiveness. The deep mud common in some parts of the front, caused by damaged drainage systems flooding nearby areas, made horses and mules vital, as they were the only means of getting supplies to the front and guns moved from place to place. After the April 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge, one Canadian soldier recalled, "the horses were up to their bellies in mud. We'd put them on a picket line between the wagon wheels at night and they'd be sunk in over their fetlocks the next day. We had to shoot quite a number."
Thousands of horses were employed to pull field guns; six to twelve horses were required to pull each gun. During the Battle of Cambrai, horses were used to recover guns captured by the British from no man's land. In one instance, two teams of sixteen horses each had their hooves, tack and pulling chains wrapped to reduce noise. The teams and their handlers then successfully pulled out two guns and returned them to British lines, the horses jumping a trench in the process and waiting out an artillery barrage by German troops on the road they needed to take.
Dummy horses were sometimes used to deceive the enemy into misreading the location of troops. They were effectively used by Allenby during his campaigns in the east, especially late in the war. Evidence exists that the Germans used horses in their experimentations with chemical and biological warfare. German agents in the US are suspected of infecting cattle and horses bound for France with glanders, a disease which can fatally spread to humans; similar tactics were used by the Germans against the Russians, causing breakdowns in their ability to move artillery on the Eastern Front.
The value of horses was known to all. In 1917 at the Battle of Passchendaele, men at the front understood that "at this stage to lose a horse was worse than losing a man because after all, men were replaceable while horses weren't."
## Procurement
### Allied forces
To meet its need for horses, Britain imported them from Australia, Canada, the US, and Argentina, and requisitioned them from British civilians. Lord Kitchener ordered that no horses under should be confiscated, at the request of many British children, who were concerned for the welfare of their ponies. The British Army Remount Service, in an effort to improve the supply of horses for potential military use, provided the services of high quality stallions to British farmers for breeding their broodmares. The already rare Cleveland Bay was almost wiped out by the war; smaller members of the breed were used to carry British troopers, while larger horses were used to pull artillery. New Zealand found that horses over fared worse than those under that height. Well-built Thoroughbreds of 15 hands and under worked well, as did compact horses of other breeds that stood . Larger crossbred horses were acceptable for regular work with plentiful rations, but proved less able to withstand short rations and long journeys. Riflemen with tall horses suffered more from fatigue, due to the number of times they were required to mount and dismount the animals. Animals used for draught work, including pulling artillery, were also found to be more efficient when they were of medium size with good endurance than when they were tall, heavy and long-legged.
The continued resupply of horses was a major issue of the war. One estimate puts the number of horses that served in World War I at around six million, with a large percentage of them dying due to war-related causes. In 1914, the year the war began, the British Army owned only about 25,000 horses. This shortfall required the US to help with remount efforts, even before it had formally entered the war. Between 1914 and 1918, the US sent almost one million horses overseas, and another 182,000 were taken overseas with American troops. This deployment seriously depleted the country's equine population. Only 200 returned to the US, and 60,000 were killed outright. By the middle of 1917, Britain had procured 591,000 horses and 213,000 mules, as well as almost 60,000 camels and oxen. Britain's Remount Department spent £67.5 million on purchasing, training and delivering horses and mules to the front. The British Remount Department became a major multinational business and a leading player in the international horse trade, through supplying horses to not only the British Army but also to Canada, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, and even a few to the US. Shipping horses between the US and Europe was both costly and dangerous; American Expeditionary Force officials calculated that almost seven times as much room was needed per ton for animals than for average wartime cargo, and over 6,500 horses and mules were drowned or killed by shell fire on Allied ships attacked by the Germans. In turn, New Zealand lost around 3 percent of the nearly 10,000 horses shipped to the front during the war.
Due to the high casualty rates, even the well-supplied American army was facing a deficit of horses by the final year of the war. After the American First Army, led by General John J. Pershing, pushed the Germans out of the Argonne Forest in late 1918, they were faced with a shortage of around 100,000 horses, effectively immobilizing the artillery. When Pershing asked Ferdinand Foch, Marshal of France, for 25,000 horses, he was refused. It was impossible to obtain more from the US, as shipping space was limited, and Pershing's senior supply officer stated that "the animal situation will soon become desperate." The Americans, however, fought on with what they had until the end of the war, unable to obtain sufficient supplies of new animals.
### Central Powers
Before World War I, Germany had increased its reserves of horses through state-sponsored stud farms (German: Remonteamt) and annuities paid to individual horse breeders. These breeding programs were designed specifically to provide high-quality horses and mules for the German military. These efforts, and the horse-intensive nature of warfare in the early 20th century, caused Germany to increase the ratio of horses to men in the army, from one to four in 1870 to one to three in 1914. The breeding programs allowed the Germans to provide all of their own horses at the beginning of the war. Horses were considered army reservists; owners had to register them regularly, and the army kept detailed records on the locations of all horses. In the first weeks of the war, the German army mobilized 715,000 horses and the Austrians 600,000. Overall, the ratio of horses to men in Central Powers nations was estimated at one to three.
The only way Germany could acquire large numbers of horses after the war began was by conquest. More than 375,000 horses were taken from German-occupied French territory for use by the German military. Captured Ukrainian territory provided another 140,000. Ardennes were used to pull artillery for the French and Belgian armies. Their calm, tolerant disposition, combined with their active and flexible nature, made them an ideal artillery horse. The breed was considered so useful and valuable that when the Germans established the Commission for the Purchase of Horses in October 1914 to capture Belgian horses, the Ardennes was one of two breeds specified as important, the other being the Brabant. The Germans were not able to capture the horses belonging to the Belgian royal family, as they were successfully evacuated, although they captured enough horses to disrupt Belgian agriculture and breeding programs. Horses used for the transport of goods were also taken, resulting in a fuel crisis in Belgium the next winter as there were no horses to pull coal wagons. The Germans sold some of their captured horses at auction. Prevented by the Allies from importing remounts, the Germans ultimately ran out of horses, making it difficult for them to move supplies and artillery, a factor contributing to their defeat.
## Casualties and upkeep
Battle losses of horses were approximately 25 percent of all war-related equine deaths between 1914 and 1916. Disease and exhaustion accounted for the remainder. The highest death rates were in East Africa, where in 1916 alone deaths of the original mounts and remounts accounted for 290% of the initial stock numbers, mainly due to infection from the tsetse fly. On average, Britain lost about 15 percent (of the initial military stock) of its animals each year of the war (killed, missing, died or abandoned), with losses at 17 percent in the French theatre. This compared to 80 percent in the Crimean War, 120 percent in the Boer War and 10 percent in peacetime. During some periods of the war, 1,000 horses per day were arriving in Europe as remounts for British troops, to replace horses lost. Equine casualties were especially high during battles of attrition, such as the 1916 Battle of Verdun between French and German forces. In one day in March, 7,000 horses were killed by long-range shelling on both sides, including 97 killed by a single shot from a French naval gun. By 1917, Britain had over a million horses and mules in service, but harsh conditions, especially during winter, resulted in heavy losses, particularly amongst the Clydesdale horses, the main breed used to haul the guns. Over the course of the war, Britain lost over 484,000 horses, one horse for every two men. A small number of these, 210, were killed by poison gas.
Feeding horses was a major issue, and horse fodder was the single largest commodity shipped to the front by some countries, including Britain. Horses ate around ten times as much food by weight as a human, and hay and oats further burdened already overloaded transport services. In 1917, Allied operations were threatened when horse feed rations were reduced after German submarine activity restricted supplies of oats from North America, combined with poor Italian harvests. The British rationed hay and oats, although their horses were still issued more than those from France or Italy. The Germans faced an even worse fodder crisis, as they had underestimated the amount of food they needed to import and stockpile before the beginning of the war. Sawdust was mixed with food during times of shortage to ease animals' sense of hunger, and many animals died of starvation. Some feed was taken from captured territories on the Eastern Front, and more from the British during the advances of the 1918 spring offensive.
Animals bolstered morale at the front, due to the soldiers' affection for them. Some recruitment posters from World War I showcased the partnership between horse and man in attempts to gain more recruits. Despite the boost in morale, horses could also be a health hazard for the soldiers, mainly because of the difficulty of maintaining high levels of hygiene around horses, which was especially noted in camps in Egypt. Horse manure was commonplace in the battle and staging areas on several fronts, creating breeding grounds for disease-carrying insects. Manure was supposed to be buried, but fast-moving battle conditions often made this impossible. Sanitation officers were responsible for the burial of horse carcasses, among other duties.
Many horses died as a result of the conditions at the front—of exhaustion, drowning, becoming mired in mud and falling in shell holes. Other horses were captured after their riders were killed. Horses also endured poor feeding and care, poison gas attacks that injured their respiratory systems and skin, and skin conditions such as mange. When gas warfare began in 1915, nose plugs were improvised for the horses to allow them to breathe during attacks. Later, several types of gas masks were developed by both the Central and Allied nations, although horses often confused them with feedbags and destroyed them. Soldiers found that better-bred horses were more likely to suffer from shell shock and act up when exposed to the sights and sounds of war than less-well-bred animals, who often learned to lie down and take cover at the sound of artillery fire. Veterinary hospitals were established to assist horses in recovering from shell shock and battle wounds, but thousands of equine corpses still lined the roads of the Western Front. In one year, 120,000 horses were treated for wounds or disease by British veterinary hospitals alone. Ambulances and field veterinary hospitals were required to care for the horses, and horse trailers were first developed for use on the Western Front as equine ambulances. Disease was also a major issue for horses at the front, with equine influenza, ringworm, sand colic, sores from fly bites, and anthrax among the illnesses that affected them. British Army Veterinary Corps hospitals treated 725,216 horses over the course of the war, successfully healing 529,064. Horses were moved from the front to veterinary hospitals by several methods of transportation, including on foot, by rail and by barge. During the last months of the war, barges were considered ideal transportation for horses suffering wounds from shells and bombs.
When the war ended, many horses were killed due to age or illness, while younger ones were sold to slaughterhouses or to locals, often upsetting the soldiers who had to give up their beloved mounts. There were 13,000 Australian horses remaining at the end of World War I, but due to quarantine restrictions, they could not be shipped back to Australia. Two thousand were designated to be killed, and the remaining 11,000 were sold, most going to India as remounts for the British Army. Of the 136,000 horses shipped from Australia to fighting fronts in the war, only one, Sandy, was returned to Australia. New Zealand horses were also left behind; those not required by the British or Egyptian armies were shot to prevent maltreatment by other purchasers. The horses left behind did not always have good lives—the Brooke Trust was established in 1930 when a young British woman arrived in Cairo, only to find hundreds of previously Allied-owned horses living in poor conditions, having been sold to Egyptians after the cessation of the war. In 1934, the Old War Horse Memorial Hospital was opened by the trust, and is estimated to have helped over 5,000 horses that had served in World War I; as of 2011, the hospital continues to serve equines in the Cairo area.
## Legacy
The horse is the animal most associated with the war, and memorials have been erected to its service, including that at St. Jude on the Hill, Hampstead, which bears the inscription "Most obediently and often most painfully they died – faithful unto death." The Animals in War Memorial in London commemorates animals, including horses, that served with the British and their allies in all wars. The inscription reads: "Animals In War. This monument is dedicated to all the animals that served and died alongside British and allied forces in wars and campaigns throughout time. They had no choice." In Minneapolis, a monument by Lake of the Isles is dedicated to the horses of the Minnesota 151st Field Artillery killed in battle during World War I.
The men of the Australian Light Horse Brigade and New Zealand Mounted Rifles who died between 1916 and 1918 in Egypt, Palestine and Syria are commemorated by the Desert Mounted Corps Memorial, or Light Horse Memorial, on Anzac Parade, in Canberra, Australia. The original version of this monument was in Port Said in Egypt, and was mostly destroyed during the 1956 Suez War. A piece from the original memorial, a shattered horse's head, was brought back to Australia and used as part of a new statue in the A is for Animals exhibition honoring animals who have served with the Australian military. The exhibition also contains the preserved head of Sandy, the only horse to return to Australia after the war.
War artist Alfred Munnings was sent to France in early 1918 as an official war artist with the Canadian Cavalry Brigade. The Canadian Forestry Corps invited Munnings to tour their work camps in France after seeing some of his work at the headquarters of General Simms, the Canadian representative. He produced drawings, watercolors, and paintings of their work, including Draft Horses, Lumber Mill in the Forest of Dreux in 1918. Forty-five of his paintings were displayed at the Canadian War Records Exhibition at the Royal Academy, many of which featured horses in war. Numerous other artists created works that featured the horses of World War I, including Umberto Boccioni with Charge of the Lancers and Terence Cuneo with his celebrated postwar painting of the saving of the guns at Le Cateau during the Retreat from Mons. During World War I, artist Fortunino Matania created the iconic image Goodbye Old Man that would be used by both British and American organizations to raise awareness of the suffering of animals affected by war. The painting was accompanied by a poem, The Soldiers Kiss, that also emphasized the plight of the horse in war.
Writing poetry was a means of passing the time for soldiers of many nations, and the horses of World War I figured prominently in several poems. In 1982, Michael Morpurgo wrote the novel War Horse, about a cavalry horse in the war. The book was later adapted into a successful play of the same name, and also into a screenplay, with the movie, released on December 25, 2011, in the United States.
## See also
- Australian Light Horse
- Horses in warfare
|
15,980 |
James K. Polk
| 1,173,873,405 |
11th President of the United States
|
[
"1795 births",
"1840 United States vice-presidential candidates",
"1840s in the United States",
"1849 deaths",
"19th-century American people",
"19th-century American politicians",
"19th-century Methodists",
"19th-century Presbyterians",
"19th-century diarists",
"19th-century presidents of the United States",
"American Freemasons",
"American Presbyterians",
"American lawyers admitted to the practice of law by reading law",
"American nationalists",
"American people of Scotch-Irish descent",
"American people of Scottish descent",
"Burials in Tennessee",
"Candidates in the 1844 United States presidential election",
"Converts to Methodism",
"Deaths from cholera",
"Democratic Party (United States) presidential nominees",
"Democratic Party governors of Tennessee",
"Democratic Party members of the Tennessee House of Representatives",
"Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee",
"Democratic Party presidents of the United States",
"Infectious disease deaths in Tennessee",
"Jacksonian members of the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee",
"James K. Polk",
"Members of the United States House of Representatives who owned slaves",
"Methodists from Tennessee",
"People from Mecklenburg County, North Carolina",
"Polk family",
"Presidency of James K. Polk",
"Presidents of the United States",
"Second Party System",
"Speakers of the United States House of Representatives",
"Tennessee lawyers",
"University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni"
] |
James Knox Polk (/poʊk/; November 2, 1795 – June 15, 1849) was the 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849. Before he became president, Polk served as the 13th speaker of the House of Representatives (1835–1839) and ninth governor of Tennessee (1839–1841). A protégé of Andrew Jackson, he was a member of the Democratic Party and an advocate of Jacksonian democracy. Polk is known for extending the territory of the United States through the Mexican–American War; during his presidency, the U.S. expanded significantly, annexing the Republic of Texas, the Oregon Territory, and the Mexican Cession after winning the Mexican–American War.
After building a successful law practice in Tennessee, Polk was elected to its state legislature in 1823 and then to the United States House of Representatives in 1825, becoming a strong supporter of Jackson. After serving as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, he became Speaker of the House in 1835, the only person to serve both as Speaker and U.S. president. Polk left Congress to run for governor of Tennessee, winning in 1839 but losing in 1841 and 1843. He was a dark-horse candidate in the 1844 presidential election as the Democratic Party nominee; he entered his party's convention as a potential nominee for vice president but emerged as a compromise to head the ticket when no presidential candidate could gain the necessary two-thirds majority. In the general election, Polk defeated Henry Clay of the Whig Party.
After a negotiation fraught with the risk of war, Polk reached a settlement with Great Britain over the disputed Oregon Country, with the territory for the most part divided along the 49th parallel. He won the Mexican–American War, resulting in Mexico's cession of the entire American Southwest. He secured a substantial reduction of tariff rates with the Walker tariff of 1846. The same year, he achieved his other major goal, reestablishment of the Independent Treasury system. True to his campaign pledge to serve only one term (one of the few U.S. presidents to make and keep such a pledge), Polk left office in 1849 and returned to Tennessee, where he died of cholera three months after leaving the White House.
Though he is relatively obscure today, scholars have ranked Polk favorably for his ability to promote and achieve the major items on his presidential agenda. He has also been criticized for leading the country into a war with Mexico that exacerbated sectional divides. A property owner who used slave labor, he kept a plantation in Mississippi and increased his slave ownership during his presidency. Polk's policy of territorial expansion saw the nation reach the Pacific coast and almost all its contiguous borders. He made the U.S. a nation poised to become a world power, but with divisions between free and slave states gravely exacerbated, setting the stage for the Civil War.
## Early life
James Knox Polk was born on November 2, 1795, in a log cabin in Pineville, North Carolina. He was the first of 10 children born into a family of farmers. His mother Jane named him after her father, James Knox. His father Samuel Polk was a farmer, slaveholder, and surveyor of Scots-Irish descent. The Polks had immigrated to America in the late 17th century, settling initially on the Eastern Shore of Maryland but later moving to south-central Pennsylvania and then to the Carolina hill country.
The Knox and Polk families were Presbyterian. While Polk's mother remained a devout Presbyterian, his father, whose own father Ezekiel Polk was a deist, rejected dogmatic Presbyterianism. He refused to declare his belief in Christianity at his son's baptism, and the minister refused to baptize young James. Nevertheless, James' mother "stamped her rigid orthodoxy on James, instilling lifelong Calvinistic traits of self-discipline, hard work, piety, individualism, and a belief in the imperfection of human nature", according to James A. Rawley's American National Biography article.
In 1803, Ezekiel Polk led four of his adult children and their families to the Duck River area in what is now Maury County, Tennessee; Samuel Polk and his family followed in 1806. The Polk clan dominated politics in Maury County and in the new town of Columbia. Samuel became a county judge, and the guests at his home included Andrew Jackson, who had already served as a judge and in Congress. James learned from the political talk around the dinner table; both Samuel and Ezekiel were strong supporters of President Thomas Jefferson and opponents of the Federalist Party.
Polk suffered from frail health as a child, a particular disadvantage in a frontier society. His father took him to see prominent Philadelphia physician Dr. Philip Syng Physick for urinary stones. The journey was broken off by James's severe pain, and Dr. Ephraim McDowell of Danville, Kentucky, operated to remove them. No anesthetic was available except brandy. The operation was successful, but it may have left James impotent or sterile, as he had no children. He recovered quickly and became more robust. His father offered to bring him into one of his businesses, but he wanted an education and enrolled at a Presbyterian academy in 1813. He became a member of the Zion Church near his home in 1813 and enrolled in the Zion Church Academy. He then entered Bradley Academy in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where he proved a promising student.
In January 1816, Polk was admitted into the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a second-semester sophomore. The Polk family had connections with the university, then a small school of about 80 students; Samuel was its land agent in Tennessee and his cousin William Polk was a trustee. Polk's roommate was William Dunn Moseley, who became the first Governor of Florida. Polk joined the Dialectic Society where he took part in debates, became its president, and learned the art of oratory. In one address, he warned that some American leaders were flirting with monarchical ideals, singling out Alexander Hamilton, a foe of Jefferson. Polk graduated with honors in May 1818.
After graduation, Polk returned to Nashville, Tennessee to study law under renowned trial attorney Felix Grundy, who became his first mentor. On September 20, 1819, he was elected clerk of the Tennessee State Senate, which then sat in Murfreesboro and to which Grundy had been elected. He was re-elected clerk in 1821 without opposition, and continued to serve until 1822. In June 1820, he was admitted to the Tennessee bar, and his first case was to defend his father against a public fighting charge; he secured his release for a one-dollar fine. He opened an office in Maury County and was successful as a lawyer, due largely to the many cases arising from the Panic of 1819, a severe depression. His law practice subsidized his political career.
## Early political career
### Tennessee state legislator
By the time the legislature adjourned its session in September 1822, Polk was determined to be a candidate for the Tennessee House of Representatives. The election was in August 1823, almost a year away, allowing him ample time for campaigning. Already involved locally as a member of the Masons, he was commissioned in the Tennessee militia as a captain in the cavalry regiment of the 5th Brigade. He was later appointed a colonel on the staff of Governor William Carroll, and was afterwards often referred to as "Colonel". Although many of the voters were members of the Polk clan, the young politician campaigned energetically. People liked Polk's oratory, which earned him the nickname "Napoleon of the Stump." At the polls, where Polk provided alcoholic refreshments for his voters, he defeated incumbent William Yancey.
Beginning in early 1822, Polk courted Sarah Childress—they were engaged the following year and married on January 1, 1824, in Murfreesboro. Educated far better than most women of her time, especially in frontier Tennessee, Sarah Polk was from one of the state's most prominent families. During James's political career Sarah assisted her husband with his speeches, gave him advice on policy matters, and played an active role in his campaigns. Rawley noted that Sarah Polk's grace, intelligence and charming conversation helped compensate for her husband's often austere manner.
Polk's first mentor was Grundy, but in the legislature, Polk came increasingly to oppose him on such matters as land reform, and came to support the policies of Andrew Jackson, by then a military hero for his victory at the Battle of New Orleans (1815). Jackson was a family friend to both the Polks and the Childresses—there is evidence Sarah Polk and her siblings called him "Uncle Andrew"—and James Polk quickly came to support his presidential ambitions for 1824. When the Tennessee Legislature deadlocked on whom to elect as U.S. senator in 1823 (until 1913, legislators, not the people, elected senators), Jackson's name was placed in nomination. Polk broke from his usual allies, casting his vote for Jackson, who won. The Senate seat boosted Jackson's presidential chances by giving him current political experience to match his military accomplishments. This began an alliance that would continue until Jackson's death early in Polk's presidency. Polk, through much of his political career, was known as "Young Hickory", based on the nickname for Jackson, "Old Hickory". Polk's political career was as dependent on Jackson as his nickname implied.
In the 1824 United States presidential election, Jackson got the most electoral votes (he also led in the popular vote) but as he did not receive a majority in the Electoral College, the election was thrown into the U.S. House of Representatives, which chose Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, who had received the second-most of each. Polk, like other Jackson supporters, believed that Speaker of the House Henry Clay had traded his support as fourth-place finisher (the House may only choose from among the top three) to Adams in a Corrupt Bargain in exchange for being the new Secretary of State. Polk had in August 1824 declared his candidacy for the following year's election to the House of Representatives from Tennessee's 6th congressional district. The district stretched from Maury County south to the Alabama line, and extensive electioneering was expected of the five candidates. Polk campaigned so vigorously that Sarah began to worry about his health. During the campaign, Polk's opponents said that at the age of 29 Polk was too young for the responsibility of a seat in the House, but he won the election with 3,669 votes out of 10,440 and took his seat in Congress later that year.
### Jackson disciple
When Polk arrived in Washington, D.C. for Congress's regular session in December 1825, he roomed in Benjamin Burch's boarding house with other Tennessee representatives, including Sam Houston. Polk made his first major speech on March 13, 1826, in which he said that the Electoral College should be abolished and that the president should be elected by popular vote. Remaining bitter at the alleged Corrupt Bargain between Adams and Clay, Polk became a vocal critic of the Adams administration, frequently voting against its policies. Sarah Polk remained at home in Columbia during her husband's first year in Congress, but accompanied him to Washington beginning in December 1826; she assisted him with his correspondence and came to hear James's speeches.
Polk won re-election in 1827 and continued to oppose the Adams administration. He remained in close touch with Jackson, and when Jackson ran for president in 1828, Polk was an advisor on his campaign. Following Jackson's victory over Adams, Polk became one of the new President's most prominent and loyal supporters. Working on Jackson's behalf, Polk successfully opposed federally-funded "internal improvements" such as a proposed Buffalo-to-New Orleans road, and he was pleased by Jackson's Maysville Road veto in May 1830, when Jackson blocked a bill to finance a road extension entirely within one state, Kentucky, deeming it unconstitutional. Jackson opponents alleged that the veto message, which strongly complained about Congress' penchant for passing pork barrel projects, was written by Polk, but he denied this, stating that the message was entirely the President's.
Polk served as Jackson's most prominent House ally in the "Bank War" that developed over Jackson's opposition to the re-authorization of the Second Bank of the United States. The Second Bank, headed by Nicholas Biddle of Philadelphia, not only held federal dollars but controlled much of the credit in the United States, as it could present currency issued by local banks for redemption in gold or silver. Some Westerners, including Jackson, opposed the Second Bank, deeming it a monopoly acting in the interest of Easterners. Polk, as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, conducted investigations of the Second Bank, and though the committee voted for a bill to renew the bank's charter (scheduled to expire in 1836), Polk issued a strong minority report condemning the bank. The bill passed Congress in 1832, but Jackson vetoed it and Congress failed to override the veto. Jackson's action was highly controversial in Washington but had considerable public support, and he won easy re-election in 1832.
Like most Southerners, Polk favored low tariffs on imported goods, and initially sympathized with John C. Calhoun's opposition to the Tariff of Abominations during the Nullification Crisis of 1832–1833, but came over to Jackson's side as Calhoun moved towards advocating secession. Thereafter, Polk remained loyal to Jackson as the President sought to assert federal authority. Polk condemned secession and supported the Force Bill against South Carolina, which had claimed the authority to nullify federal tariffs. The matter was settled by Congress passing a compromise tariff.
### Ways and Means Chair and Speaker of the House
In December 1833, after being elected to a fifth consecutive term, Polk, with Jackson's backing, became the chairman of Ways and Means, a powerful position in the House. In that position, Polk supported Jackson's withdrawal of federal funds from the Second Bank. Polk's committee issued a report questioning the Second Bank's finances and another supporting Jackson's actions against it. In April 1834, the Ways and Means Committee reported a bill to regulate state deposit banks, which, when passed, enabled Jackson to deposit funds in pet banks, and Polk got legislation passed to allow the sale of the government's stock in the Second Bank.
In June 1834, Speaker of the House Andrew Stevenson resigned from Congress to become Minister to the United Kingdom. With Jackson's support, Polk ran for speaker against fellow Tennessean John Bell, Calhoun disciple Richard Henry Wilde, and Joel Barlow Sutherland of Pennsylvania. After ten ballots, Bell, who had the support of many opponents of the administration, defeated Polk. Jackson called in political debts to try to get Polk elected Speaker of the House at the start of the next Congress in December 1835, assuring Polk in a letter he meant him to burn that New England would support him for speaker. They were successful; Polk defeated Bell to take the speakership.
According to Thomas M. Leonard, "by 1836, while serving as Speaker of the House of Representatives, Polk approached the zenith of his congressional career. He was at the center of Jacksonian Democracy on the House floor, and, with the help of his wife, he ingratiated himself into Washington's social circles." The prestige of the speakership caused them to move from a boarding house to their own residence on Pennsylvania Avenue. In the 1836 presidential election, Vice President Martin Van Buren, Jackson's chosen successor, defeated multiple Whig candidates, including Tennessee Senator Hugh Lawson White. Greater Whig strength in Tennessee helped White carry his state, though Polk's home district went for Van Buren. Ninety percent of Tennessee voters had supported Jackson in 1832, but many in the state disliked the destruction of the Second Bank, or were unwilling to support Van Buren.
As Speaker of the House, Polk worked for the policies of Jackson and later Van Buren. Polk appointed committees with Democratic chairs and majorities, including the New York radical C. C. Cambreleng as the new Ways and Means chair, although he tried to maintain the speaker's traditional nonpartisan appearance. The two major issues during Polk's speakership were slavery and, after the Panic of 1837, the economy. Polk firmly enforced the "gag rule", by which the House of Representatives would not accept or debate citizen petitions regarding slavery. This ignited fierce protests from John Quincy Adams, who was by then a congressman from Massachusetts and an abolitionist. Instead of finding a way to silence Adams, Polk frequently engaged in useless shouting matches, leading Jackson to conclude that Polk should have shown better leadership. Van Buren and Polk faced pressure to rescind the Specie Circular, Jackson's 1836 order that payment for government lands be in gold and silver. Some believed this had led to the crash by causing a lack of confidence in paper currency issued by banks. Despite such arguments, with support from Polk and his cabinet, Van Buren chose to back the Specie Circular. Polk and Van Buren attempted to establish an Independent Treasury system that would allow the government to oversee its own deposits (rather than using pet banks), but the bill was defeated in the House. It eventually passed in 1840.
Using his thorough grasp of the House's rules, Polk attempted to bring greater order to its proceedings. Unlike many of his peers, he never challenged anyone to a duel no matter how much they insulted his honor. The economic downturn cost the Democrats seats, so that when he faced re-election as Speaker of the House in December 1837, he won by only 13 votes, and he foresaw defeat in 1839. Polk by then had presidential ambitions but was well aware that no Speaker of the House had ever become president (Polk is still the only one to have held both offices). After seven terms in the House, two as speaker, he announced that he would not seek re-election, choosing instead to run for Governor of Tennessee in the 1839 election.
### Governor of Tennessee
In 1835, the Democrats had lost the governorship of Tennessee for the first time in their history, and Polk decided to return home to help the party. Tennessee was afire for White and Whiggism; the state had reversed its political loyalties since the days of Jacksonian domination. As head of the state Democratic Party, Polk undertook his first statewide campaign, He opposed Whig incumbent Newton Cannon, who sought a third two-year term as governor. The fact that Polk was the one called upon to "redeem" Tennessee from the Whigs tacitly acknowledged him as head of the state Democratic Party.
Polk campaigned on national issues, whereas Cannon stressed state issues. After being bested by Polk in the early debates, the governor retreated to Nashville, the state capital, alleging important official business. Polk made speeches across the state, seeking to become known more widely than just in his native Middle Tennessee. When Cannon came back on the campaign trail in the final days, Polk pursued him, hastening the length of the state to be able to debate the governor again. On Election Day, August 1, 1839, Polk defeated Cannon, 54,102 to 51,396, as the Democrats recaptured the state legislature and won back three congressional seats.
Tennessee's governor had limited power—there was no gubernatorial veto, and the small size of the state government limited any political patronage. But Polk saw the office as a springboard for his national ambitions, seeking to be nominated as Van Buren's vice presidential running mate at the 1840 Democratic National Convention in Baltimore in May. Polk hoped to be the replacement if Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson was dumped from the ticket; Johnson was disliked by many Southern whites for fathering two daughters by a biracial mistress and attempting to introduce them into white society. Johnson was from Kentucky, so Polk's Tennessee residence would keep the New Yorker Van Buren's ticket balanced. The convention chose to endorse no one for vice president, stating that a choice would be made once the popular vote was cast. Three weeks after the convention, recognizing that Johnson was too popular in the party to be ousted, Polk withdrew his name. The Whig presidential candidate, General William Henry Harrison, conducted a rollicking campaign with the motto "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", easily winning both the national vote and that in Tennessee. Polk campaigned in vain for Van Buren and was embarrassed by the outcome; Jackson, who had returned to his home, the Hermitage, near Nashville, was horrified at the prospect of a Whig administration. In the 1840 election, Polk received one vote from a faithless elector in the Electoral College's vote for vice president. Harrison's death after a month in office in 1841 left the presidency to Vice President John Tyler, who soon broke with the Whigs.
Polk's three major programs during his governorship; regulating state banks, implementing state internal improvements, and improving education all failed to win the approval of the legislature. His only major success as governor was his politicking to secure the replacement of Tennessee's two Whig U.S. senators with Democrats. Polk's tenure was hindered by the continuing nationwide economic crisis that had followed the Panic of 1837 and which had caused Van Buren to lose the 1840 election.
Encouraged by the success of Harrison's campaign, the Whigs ran a freshman legislator from frontier Wilson County, James C. Jones against Polk in 1841. "Lean Jimmy" had proven one of their most effective gadflies against Polk, and his lighthearted tone at campaign debates was very effective against the serious Polk. The two debated the length of Tennessee, and Jones's support of distribution to the states of surplus federal revenues, and of a national bank, struck a chord with Tennessee voters. On election day in August 1841, Polk was defeated by 3,000 votes, the first time he had been beaten at the polls. Polk returned to Columbia and the practice of law and prepared for a rematch against Jones in 1843, but though the new governor took less of a joking tone, it made little difference to the outcome, as Polk was beaten again, this time by 3,833 votes. In the wake of his second statewide defeat in three years, Polk faced an uncertain political future.
## Election of 1844
### Democratic nomination
Despite his loss, Polk was determined to become the next vice president of the United States, seeing it as a path to the presidency. Van Buren was the frontrunner for the 1844 Democratic nomination, and Polk engaged in a careful campaign to become his running mate. The former president faced opposition from Southerners who feared his views on slavery, while his handling of the Panic of 1837—he had refused to rescind the Specie Circular—aroused opposition from some in the West (today's Midwestern United States) who believed his hard money policies had hurt their section of the country. Many Southerners backed Calhoun's candidacy, Westerners rallied around Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, and former Vice President Johnson also maintained a strong following among Democrats. Jackson assured Van Buren by letter that Polk in his campaigns for governor had "fought the battle well and fought it alone". Polk hoped to gain Van Buren's support, hinting in a letter that a Van Buren/Polk ticket could carry Tennessee, but found him unconvinced.
The biggest political issue in the United States at that time was territorial expansion. The Republic of Texas had successfully revolted against Mexico in 1836. With the republic largely populated by American emigres, those on both sides of the Sabine River border between the U.S. and Texas deemed it inevitable that Texas would join the United States, but this would anger Mexico, which considered Texas a breakaway province, and threatened war if the United States annexed it. Jackson, as president, had recognized Texas independence, but the initial momentum toward annexation had stalled. Britain was seeking to expand her influence in Texas: Britain had abolished slavery, and if Texas did the same, it would provide a western haven for runaways to match one in the North. A Texas not in the United States would also stand in the way of what was deemed America's Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent.
Clay was nominated for president by acclamation at the April 1844 Whig National Convention, with New Jersey's Theodore Frelinghuysen his running mate. A Kentucky slaveholder at a time when opponents of Texas annexation argued that it would give slavery more room to spread, Clay sought a nuanced position on the issue. Jackson, who strongly supported a Van Buren/Polk ticket, was delighted when Clay issued a letter for publication in the newspapers opposing Texas annexation, only to be devastated when he learned Van Buren had done the same thing. Van Buren did this because he feared losing his base of support in the Northeast, but his supporters in the old Southwest were stunned at his action. Polk, on the other hand, had written a pro-annexation letter that had been published four days before Van Buren's. Jackson wrote sadly to Van Buren that no candidate who opposed annexation could be elected, and decided Polk was the best person to head the ticket. Jackson met with Polk at the Hermitage on May 13, 1844, and explained to his visitor that only an expansionist from the South or Southwest could be elected—and, in his view, Polk had the best chance. Polk was at first startled, calling the plan "utterly abortive", but he agreed to accept it. Polk immediately wrote to instruct his lieutenants at the convention to work for his nomination as president.
Despite Jackson's quiet efforts on his behalf, Polk was skeptical that he could win. Nevertheless, because of the opposition to Van Buren by expansionists in the West and South, Polk's key lieutenant at the 1844 Democratic National Convention in Baltimore, Gideon Johnson Pillow, believed Polk could emerge as a compromise candidate. Publicly, Polk, who remained in Columbia during the convention, professed full support for Van Buren's candidacy and was believed to be seeking the vice presidency. Polk was one of the few major Democrats to have declared for the annexation of Texas.
The convention opened on May 27, 1844. A crucial question was whether the nominee needed two-thirds of the delegate vote, as had been the case at previous Democratic conventions, or merely a majority. A vote for two-thirds would doom Van Buren's candidacy due to opposition from southern delegates. With the support of the Southern states, the two-thirds rule was passed. Van Buren won a majority on the first presidential ballot but failed to win the necessary two-thirds, and his support slowly faded. Cass, Johnson, Calhoun and James Buchanan also received votes on the first ballot, and Cass took the lead on the fifth. After seven ballots, the convention remained deadlocked: Cass could not reach two-thirds, and Van Buren's supporters became discouraged about his chances. Delegates were ready to consider a new candidate who might break the stalemate.
When the convention adjourned after the seventh ballot, Pillow, who had been waiting for an opportunity to press Polk's name, conferred with George Bancroft of Massachusetts, a politician and historian and longtime Polk correspondent, who had planned to nominate Polk for vice president. Bancroft had supported Van Buren's candidacy and was willing to see New York Senator Silas Wright head the ticket, but as a Van Buren loyalist, Wright would not consent. Pillow and Bancroft decided if Polk were nominated for president, Wright might accept the second spot. Before the eighth ballot, former Attorney General Benjamin F. Butler, head of the New York delegation, read a pre-written letter from Van Buren to be used if he could not be nominated, withdrawing in Wright's favor. But Wright (who was in Washington) had also entrusted a pre-written letter to a supporter, in which he refused to be considered as a presidential candidate, and stated in the letter that he agreed with Van Buren's position on Texas. Had Wright's letter not been read he most likely would have been nominated, but without him, Butler began to rally Van Buren supporters for Polk as the best possible candidate, and Bancroft placed Polk's name before the convention. On the eighth ballot, Polk received only 44 votes to Cass's 114 and Van Buren's 104, but the deadlock showed signs of breaking. Butler formally withdrew Van Buren's name, many delegations declared for the Tennessean, and on the ninth ballot, Polk received 233 ballots to Cass's 29, making him the Democratic nominee for president. The nomination was then made unanimous.
The convention then considered the vice-presidential nomination. Butler advocated for Wright, and the convention agreed, with only four Georgia delegates dissenting. Word of Wright's nomination was sent to him in Washington via telegraph. Having declined by proxy an almost certain presidential nomination, Wright also refused the vice-presidential nomination. Senator Robert J. Walker of Mississippi, a close Polk ally, then suggested former senator George M. Dallas of Pennsylvania. Dallas was acceptable enough to all factions and gained the nomination on the third ballot. The delegates passed a platform and adjourned on May 30.
Many contemporary politicians, including Pillow and Bancroft, later claimed credit for getting Polk the nomination, but Walter R. Borneman felt that most of the credit was due to Jackson and Polk, "the two who had done the most were back in Tennessee, one an aging icon ensconced at the Hermitage and the other a shrewd lifelong politician waiting expectantly in Columbia". Whigs mocked Polk with the chant "Who is James K. Polk?", affecting never to have heard of him. Though he had experience as Speaker of the House and Governor of Tennessee, all previous presidents had served as vice president, Secretary of State, or as a high-ranking general. Polk has been described as the first "dark horse" presidential nominee, although his nomination was less of a surprise than that of future nominees such as Franklin Pierce or Warren G. Harding. Despite his party's gibes, Clay recognized that Polk could unite the Democrats.
### General election
Rumors of Polk's nomination reached Nashville on June 4, much to Jackson's delight; they were substantiated later that day. The dispatches were sent on to Columbia, arriving the same day, and letters and newspapers describing what had happened at Baltimore were in Polk's hands by June 6. He accepted his nomination by letter dated June 12, alleging that he had never sought the office, and stating his intent to serve only one term. Wright was embittered by what he called the "foul plot" against Van Buren, and demanded assurances that Polk had played no part; it was only after Polk professed that he had remained loyal to Van Buren that Wright supported his campaign. Following the custom of the time that presidential candidates avoid electioneering or appearing to seek the office, Polk remained in Columbia and made no speeches. He engaged in extensive correspondence with Democratic Party officials as he managed his campaign. Polk made his views known in his acceptance letter and through responses to questions sent by citizens that were printed in newspapers, often by arrangement.
A potential pitfall for Polk's campaign was the issue of whether the tariff should be for revenue only, or with the intent to protect American industry. Polk finessed the tariff issue in a published letter. Recalling that he had long stated that tariffs should only be sufficient to finance government operations, he maintained that stance but wrote that within that limitation, government could and should offer "fair and just protection" to American interests, including manufacturers. He refused to expand on this stance, acceptable to most Democrats, despite the Whigs pointing out that he had committed himself to nothing. In September, a delegation of Whigs from nearby Giles County came to Columbia, armed with specific questions on Polk's views regarding the current tariff, the Whig-passed Tariff of 1842, and with the stated intent of remaining in Columbia until they got answers. Polk took several days to respond and chose to stand by his earlier statement, provoking an outcry in the Whig papers.
Another concern was the third-party candidacy of President Tyler, which might split the Democratic vote. Tyler had been nominated by a group of loyal officeholders. Under no illusions he could win, he believed he could rally states' rights supporters and populists to hold the balance of power in the election. Only Jackson had the stature to resolve the situation, which he did with two letters to friends in the Cabinet, that he knew would be shown to Tyler, stating that the President's supporters would be welcomed back into the Democratic fold. Jackson wrote that once Tyler withdrew, many Democrats would embrace him for his pro-annexation stance. The former president also used his influence to stop Francis Preston Blair and his Globe newspaper, the semi-official organ of the Democratic Party, from attacking Tyler. These proved enough; Tyler withdrew from the race in August.
Party troubles were a third concern. Polk and Calhoun made peace when a former South Carolina congressman, Francis Pickens visited Tennessee and came to Columbia for two days and to the Hermitage for sessions with the increasingly ill Jackson. Calhoun wanted the Globe dissolved, and that Polk would act against the 1842 tariff and promote Texas annexation. Reassured on these points, Calhoun became a strong supporter.
Polk was aided regarding Texas when Clay, realizing his anti-annexation letter had cost him support, attempted in two subsequent letters to clarify his position. These angered both sides, which attacked Clay as insincere. Texas also threatened to divide the Democrats sectionally, but Polk managed to appease most Southern party leaders without antagonizing Northern ones. As the election drew closer, it became clear that most of the country favored the annexation of Texas, and some Southern Whig leaders supported Polk's campaign due to Clay's anti-annexation stance.
The campaign was vitriolic; both major party candidates were accused of various acts of malfeasance; Polk was accused of being both a duelist and a coward. The most damaging smear was the Roorback forgery; in late August an item appeared in an abolitionist newspaper, part of a book detailing fictional travels through the South of a Baron von Roorback, an imaginary German nobleman. The Ithaca Chronicle printed it without labeling it as fiction, and inserted a sentence alleging that the traveler had seen forty slaves who had been sold by Polk after being branded with his initials. The item was withdrawn by the Chronicle when challenged by the Democrats, but it was widely reprinted. Borneman suggested that the forgery backfired on Polk's opponents as it served to remind voters that Clay too was a slaveholder. John Eisenhower, in his journal article on the election, stated that the smear came too late to be effectively rebutted, and likely cost Polk Ohio. Southern newspapers, on the other hand, went far in defending Polk, one Nashville newspaper alleging that his slaves preferred their bondage to freedom. Polk himself implied to newspaper correspondents that the only slaves he owned had either been inherited or had been purchased from relatives in financial distress; this paternalistic image was also painted by surrogates like Gideon Pillow. This was not true, though not known at the time; by then he had bought over thirty slaves, both from relatives and others, mainly for the purpose of procuring labor for his Mississippi cotton plantation.
There was no uniform election day in 1844; states voted between November 1 and 12. Polk won the election with 49.5% of the popular vote and 170 of the 275 electoral votes. Becoming the first president elected despite losing his state of residence (Tennessee), Polk also lost his birth state, North Carolina. However, he won Pennsylvania and New York, where Clay lost votes to the antislavery Liberty Party candidate James G. Birney, who got more votes in New York than Polk's margin of victory. Had Clay won New York, he would have been elected president.
## Presidency (1845–1849)
With a slender victory in the popular vote, but with a greater victory in the Electoral College (170–105), Polk proceeded to implement his campaign promises. He presided over a country whose population had doubled every twenty years since the American Revolution and which had reached demographic parity with Great Britain. During Polk's tenure, technological advancements persisted, including the continued expansion of railroads and increased use of the telegraph. These improvements in communication encouraged a zest for expansionism. However, sectional divisions became worse during his tenure.
Polk set four clearly defined goals for his administration:
- Reestablish the Independent Treasury System – the Whigs had abolished the one created under Van Buren.
- Reduce tariffs.
- Acquire some or all of the Oregon Country.
- Acquire California and its harbors from Mexico.
While his domestic aims represented continuity with past Democratic policies, successful completion of Polk's foreign policy goals would represent the first major American territorial gains since the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819.
### Transition, inauguration and appointments
Polk formed a geographically balanced Cabinet. He consulted Jackson and one or two other close allies, and decided that the large states of New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia should have representation in the six-member Cabinet, as should his home state of Tennessee. At a time when an incoming president might retain some or all of his predecessor's department heads, Polk wanted an entirely fresh Cabinet, but this proved delicate. Tyler's final Secretary of State was Calhoun, leader of a considerable faction of the Democratic Party, but, when approached by emissaries, he did not take offense and was willing to step down.
Polk did not want his Cabinet to contain presidential hopefuls, though he chose to nominate James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, whose ambition for the presidency was well-known, as Secretary of State. Tennessee's Cave Johnson, a close friend and ally of Polk, was nominated for the position of Postmaster General, with George Bancroft, the historian who had played a crucial role in Polk's nomination, as Navy Secretary. Polk's choices met with the approval of Andrew Jackson, with whom Polk met for the last time in January 1845, as Jackson died that June.
Tyler's last Navy Secretary, John Y. Mason of Virginia, Polk's friend since college days and a longtime political ally, was not on the original list. As Cabinet choices were affected by factional politics and President Tyler's drive to resolve the Texas issue before leaving office, Polk at the last minute chose Mason as Attorney General. Polk also chose Mississippi Senator Walker as Secretary of the Treasury and New York's William Marcy as Secretary of War. The members worked well together, and few replacements were necessary. One reshuffle was required in 1846 when Bancroft, who wanted a diplomatic posting, became U.S. minister to Britain.
In his last days in office President Tyler sought to complete the annexation of Texas. After the Senate had defeated an earlier treaty that required a two-thirds majority, Tyler urged Congress to pass a joint resolution, relying on its constitutional power to admit states. There were disagreements about the terms under which Texas would be admitted and Polk became involved in negotiations to break the impasse. With Polk's help, the annexation resolution narrowly cleared the Senate. Tyler was unsure whether to sign the resolution or leave it for Polk and sent Calhoun to consult with Polk, who declined to give any advice. On his final evening in office, March 3, 1845, Tyler offered annexation to Texas according to the terms of the resolution.
Even before his inauguration, Polk wrote to Cave Johnson, "I intend to be myself President of the U.S." He would gain a reputation as a hard worker, spending ten to twelve hours at his desk, and rarely leaving Washington. Polk wrote, "No President who performs his duty faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. I prefer to supervise the whole operations of the government myself rather than intrust the public business to subordinates, and this makes my duties very great." When he took office on March 4, 1845, Polk, at 49, became the youngest president to that point. Polk's inauguration was the first inaugural ceremony to be reported by telegraph, and first to be shown in a newspaper illustration (in The Illustrated London News).
In his inaugural address, delivered in a steady rain, Polk made clear his support for Texas annexation by referring to the 28 states of the U.S., thus including Texas. He proclaimed his fidelity to Jackson's principles by quoting his famous toast, "Every lover of his country must shudder at the thought of the possibility of its dissolution and will be ready to adopt the patriotic sentiment, 'Our Federal Union—it must be preserved.'" He stated his opposition to a national bank, and repeated that the tariff could include incidental protection. Although he did not mention slavery specifically, he alluded to it, decrying those who would tear down an institution protected by the Constitution.
Polk devoted the second half of his speech to foreign affairs, and specifically to expansion. He applauded the annexation of Texas, warning that Texas was no affair of any other nation, and certainly none of Mexico's. He spoke of the Oregon Country, and of the many who were migrating, pledging to safeguard America's rights there and to protect the settlers.
As well as appointing Cabinet officers to advise him, Polk made his sister's son, J. Knox Walker, his personal secretary, an especially important position because, other than his slaves, Polk had no staff at the White House. Walker, who lived at the White House with his growing family (two children were born to him while living there), performed his duties competently through his uncle's presidency. Other Polk relatives visited at the White House, some for extended periods.
### Foreign policy
#### Partition of Oregon Country
Britain and the U.S. each derived claims to the Oregon Country from the voyages of explorers. Russia and Spain had waived their weak claims. Claims of the indigenous peoples of the region to their traditional lands were not a factor.
Rather than war over the distant and unsettled territory, Washington and London negotiated amicably. Previous U.S. administrations had offered to divide the region along the 49th parallel, which was not acceptable to Britain, as it had commercial interests along the Columbia River. Britain's preferred partition was unacceptable to Polk, as it would have awarded Puget Sound and all lands north of the Columbia River to Britain, and Britain was unwilling to accept the 49th parallel extended to the Pacific, as it meant the entire opening to Puget Sound would be in American hands, isolating its settlements along the Fraser River.
Edward Everett, Tyler's minister in London, had informally proposed dividing the territory at the 49th parallel with the strategic Vancouver Island granted to the British, thus allowing an opening to the Pacific. But when the new British minister in Washington, Richard Pakenham arrived in 1844 prepared to follow up, he found that many Americans desired the entire territory. Oregon had not been a major issue in the 1844 election. However, the heavy influx of settlers, mostly American, to the Oregon Country in 1845, and the rising spirit of expansionism in the United States as Texas and Oregon seized the public's eye, made a treaty with Britain more urgent. Many Democrats believed that the United States should span from coast to coast, a philosophy described as Manifest Destiny.
Though both sides sought an acceptable compromise, each also saw the territory as an important geopolitical asset that would play a large part in determining the dominant power in North America. In his inaugural address, Polk announced that he viewed the U.S. claim to the land as "clear and unquestionable", provoking threats of war from British leaders should Polk attempt to take control of the entire territory. Polk had refrained in his address from asserting a claim to the entire territory, which extended north to 54 degrees, 40 minutes north latitude, although the Democratic Party platform called for such a claim. Despite Polk's hawkish rhetoric, he viewed war over Oregon as unwise, and Polk and Buchanan began negotiations with the British. Like his predecessors, Polk again proposed a division along the 49th parallel, which was immediately rejected by Pakenham. Secretary of State Buchanan was wary of a two-front war with Mexico and Britain, but Polk was willing to risk war with both countries in pursuit of a favorable settlement. In his annual message to Congress in December 1845, Polk requested approval of giving Britain a one-year notice (as required in the Treaty of 1818) of his intention to terminate the joint occupancy of Oregon. In that message, he quoted from the Monroe Doctrine to denote America's intention of keeping European powers out, the first significant use of it since its origin in 1823. After much debate, Congress eventually passed the resolution in April 1846, attaching its hope that the dispute would be settled amicably.
When the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, learned of the proposal rejected by Pakenham, Aberdeen asked the United States to re-open negotiations, but Polk was unwilling unless a proposal was made by the British. With Britain moving towards free trade with the repeal of the Corn Laws, good trade relations with the United States were more important to Aberdeen than a distant territory. In February 1846, Louis McLane, the American minister in London, was told that Washington would look favorably on a British proposal to divide the continent at the 49th parallel. In June 1846, Pakenham presented an offer calling for a boundary line at the 49th parallel, with the exception that Britain would retain all of Vancouver Island, and there would be limited navigation rights for British subjects on the Columbia River until the expiration of the charter of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1859. Polk and most of his Cabinet were prepared to accept the proposal. The Senate ratified the Oregon Treaty in a 41–14 vote. Polk's willingness to risk war with Britain had frightened many, but his tough negotiation tactics may have gained the United States concessions from the British (particularly regarding the Columbia River) that a more conciliatory president might not have won.
#### Annexation of Texas
The annexation resolution signed by Tyler gave the president the choice of asking Texas to approve annexation, or reopening negotiations; Tyler immediately sent a messenger with the first option. Polk allowed the messenger to continue. He also sent assurance that the United States would defend Texas, and would fix its southern border at the Rio Grande, as claimed by Texas, rather than at the Nueces River, as claimed by Mexico. Public sentiment in Texas favored annexation. In July 1845, a Texas convention ratified annexation, and thereafter voters approved it. In December 1845, Texas became the 28th state. However Mexico had broken diplomatic relations with the United States on passage of the joint resolution in March 1845; now annexation escalated tensions as Mexico had never recognized Texan independence.
#### Mexican-American War
##### Road to war
Following annexation in 1845, Polk began preparations for a potential war, sending an army to Texas, led by Brigadier General Zachary Taylor. American land and naval forces were both ordered to respond to any Mexican aggression but to avoid provoking a war. Polk thought Mexico would give in under duress.
Polk hoped that a show of force would lead to negotiations. In late 1845, He sent John Slidell to Mexico to purchase New Mexico and California for \$30 million, as well as securing Mexico's agreement to a Rio Grande border. Mexican opinion was hostile and President José Joaquín de Herrera refused to receive Slidell. Herrera soon was deposed by a military coup led by General Mariano Paredes, a hard-liner who pledged to take back Texas. Dispatches from Slidell warned Washington that war was near.
Polk regarded the treatment of Slidell as an insult and an "ample cause of war", and he prepared to ask Congress to declare it. Meanwhile, in late March, General Taylor had reached the Rio Grande, and his army camped across the river from Matamoros, Tamaulipas. In April, after Mexican general Pedro de Ampudia demanded that Taylor return to the Nueces River, Taylor began a blockade of Matamoros. A skirmish on the northern side of the Rio Grande on April 25 ended in the death or capture of dozens of American soldiers and became known as the Thornton Affair. Word reached Washington on May 9, and Polk sent a war message to Congress on the ground that Mexico had, "shed American blood on the American soil". The House overwhelmingly approved a resolution declaring war and authorizing the president to accept 50,000 volunteers into the military. In the Senate, war opponents led by Calhoun questioned Polk's version of events. Nonetheless, the House resolution passed the Senate in a 40–2 vote, with Calhoun abstaining, marking the beginning of the Mexican–American War.
##### Course of the war
After the initial skirmishes, Taylor and much of his army marched away from the river to secure the supply line, leaving a makeshift base, Fort Texas. On the way back to the Rio Grande, Mexican forces under General Mariano Arista attempted to block Taylor's way as other troops laid siege to Fort Texas, forcing the U.S. Army general to the attack if he hoped to relieve the fort. In the Battle of Palo Alto, the first major engagement of the war, Taylor's troops forced Arista's from the field, suffering only four dead to hundreds for the Mexicans. The next day, Taylor led the army to victory in the Battle of Resaca de la Palma, putting the Mexican Army to rout. The early successes boosted support for the war, which despite the lopsided votes in Congress, had deeply divided the nation. Many Northern Whigs opposed the war, as did others; they felt Polk had used patriotism to manipulate the nation into fighting a war, the goal of which was to give slavery room to expand.
Polk distrusted the two senior officers, Major General Winfield Scott and Taylor, as both were Whigs, and would have replaced them with Democrats, but felt Congress would not approve it. He offered Scott the position of top commander in the war, which the general accepted. Polk and Scott already knew and disliked each other: the President made the appointment despite the fact that Scott had sought his party's presidential nomination for the 1840 election. Polk came to believe that Scott was too slow in getting himself and his army away from Washington and to the Rio Grande, and was outraged to learn Scott was using his influence in Congress to defeat the administration's plan to expand the number of generals. The news of Taylor's victory at Resaca de la Palma arrived then, and Polk decided to have Taylor take command in the field, and Scott to remain in Washington. Polk also ordered Commodore Conner to allow Antonio López de Santa Anna to return to Mexico from his exile in Havana, thinking that he would negotiate a treaty ceding territory to the U.S. for a price. Polk sent representatives to Cuba for talks with Santa Anna.
Polk sent an army expedition led by Stephen W. Kearny towards Santa Fe, to territory beyond the original claims in Texas. In 1845, Polk, fearful of French or British intervention, had sent Lieutenant Archibald H. Gillespie to California with orders to foment a pro-American rebellion that could be used to justify annexation of the territory. After meeting with Gillespie, Army captain John C. Frémont led settlers in northern California to overthrow the Mexican garrison in Sonoma in what became known as the Bear Flag Revolt. In August 1846, American forces under Kearny captured Santa Fe, capital of the province of New Mexico, without firing a shot. Almost simultaneously, Commodore Robert F. Stockton landed in Los Angeles and proclaimed the capture of California. After American forces put down a revolt, the United States held effective control of New Mexico and California. Nevertheless, the Western theater of the war would prove to be a political headache for Polk, since a dispute between Frémont and Kearny led to a break between Polk and the powerful Missouri senator (and father-in-law of Frémont), Thomas Hart Benton.
The initial public euphoria over the victories at the start of the war slowly dissipated. In August 1846, Polk asked Congress to appropriate \$2 million as a down payment for the potential purchase of Mexican lands. Polk's request ignited opposition, as he had never before made public his desire to annex parts of Mexico (aside from lands claimed by Texas). It was unclear whether such newly acquired lands would be slave or free, and there was fierce and acrimonious sectional debate. A freshman Democratic Congressman, David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, previously a firm supporter of Polk's administration, offered an amendment to the bill, the Wilmot Proviso, that would ban slavery in any land acquired using the money. The appropriation bill, with the Wilmot Proviso attached, passed the House, but died in the Senate. This discord cost Polk's party, with Democrats losing control of the House in the 1846 elections. In early 1847, though, Polk was successful in passing a bill raising further regiments, and he also finally won approval for the appropriation.
To try to bring the war to a quick end, in July 1846 Polk considered supporting a potential coup led by the exiled Mexican former president, General Antonio López de Santa Anna, with the hope that Santa Anna would sell parts of California. Santa Anna was in exile in Cuba, still a colony of Spain. Polk sent an envoy to have secret talks with Santa Anna. The U.S. Consul in Havana, R.B. Campbell, began seeking a way to engage with Santa Anna. A U.S. citizen of Spanish birth, Col. Alejandro José Atocha, knew Santa Anna and acted initially as an intermediary. Polk noted his contacts with Atocha in his diary, who said that Santa Anna was interested in concluding a treaty with the U.S. gaining territory while Mexico received payment that would include settling its debts. Polk decided that Atocha was untrustworthy and sent his own representative, Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, (a relative of John Slidell) to meet with Santa Anna. Mackenzie told Santa Anna that Polk wished to see him in power and that if they came to an agreement that the U.S. naval blockade would be lifted briefly to allow Santa Anna to return to Mexico. Polk requested \$2 million from Congress to be used to negotiate a treaty with Mexico or payment to Mexico before a treaty was signed. The blockade was indeed briefly lifted and Santa Anna returned to Mexico, not to head a government that would negotiate a treaty with the U.S., but rather to organize a military defense of his homeland. Santa Anna gloated over Polk's naïveté; Polk had been "snookered" by Santa Anna. Instead of coming to a negotiated settlement with the U.S., Santa Anna mounted a defense of Mexico and fought to the bitter end. "His actions would prolong the war for at least a year, and more than any other single person, it was Santa Anna who denied Polk's dream of short war."
This caused Polk to harden his position on Mexico, and he ordered an American landing at Veracruz, the most important Mexican port on the Gulf of Mexico. From there, troops were to march through Mexico's heartland to Mexico City, which it was hoped would end the war. Continuing to advance in northeast Mexico, Taylor defeated a Mexican army led by Ampudia in the September 1846 Battle of Monterrey, but allowed Ampudia's forces to withdraw from the town, much to Polk's consternation. Polk believed Taylor had not aggressively pursued the enemy and offered command of the Veracruz expedition to Scott.
The lack of trust Polk had in Taylor was returned by the Whig general, who feared the partisan president was trying to destroy him. Accordingly, Taylor disobeyed orders to remain near Monterrey. In March 1847, Polk learned that Taylor had continued to march south, capturing the northern Mexican town of Saltillo. Continuing beyond Saltillo, Taylor's army fought a larger Mexican force, led by Santa Anna, in the Battle of Buena Vista. Initial reports gave the victory to Mexico, with great rejoicing, but Santa Anna retreated. Mexican casualties were five times that of the Americans, and the victory made Taylor even more of a military hero in the American public's eyes, though Polk preferred to credit the bravery of the soldiers rather than the Whig general.
The U.S. changed the course of the war with its invasion of Mexico's heartland through Veracruz and ultimately the capture of Mexico City, following hard fighting. In March 1847, Scott landed in Veracruz, and quickly won control of the city. The Mexicans expected that yellow fever and other tropical diseases would weaken the U.S. forces. With the capture of Veracruz, Polk dispatched Nicholas Trist, Buchanan's chief clerk, to accompany Scott's army and negotiate a peace treaty with Mexican leaders. Trist was instructed to seek the cession of Alta California, New Mexico, and Baja California, recognition of the Rio Grande as the southern border of Texas, and U.S. access across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Trist was authorized to make a payment of up to \$30 million in exchange for these concessions.
In August 1847, as he advanced towards Mexico City, Scott defeated Santa Anna at the Battle of Contreras and the Battle of Churubusco. With the Americans at the gates of Mexico City, Trist negotiated with commissioners, but the Mexicans were willing to give up little. Scott prepared to take Mexico City, which he did in mid-September. In the United States, a heated political debate emerged regarding how much of Mexico the United States should seek to annex, Whigs such as Henry Clay arguing that the United States should only seek to settle the Texas border question, and some expansionists arguing for the annexation of all of Mexico. War opponents were also active; Whig Congressman Abraham Lincoln of Illinois introduced the "exact spot" resolutions, calling on Polk to state exactly where American blood had been shed on American soil to start the war, but the House refused to consider them.
##### Peace: the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Frustrated by a lack of progress in negotiations, Polk ordered Trist to return to Washington, but the diplomat, when the notice of recall arrived in mid-November 1847, ignored the order, deciding to remain and writing a lengthy letter to Polk the following month to justify his decision. Polk considered having Butler, designated as Scott's replacement, forcibly remove him from Mexico City. Though outraged by Trist's defiance, Polk decided to allow him some time to negotiate a treaty.
Throughout January 1848, Trist regularly met with officials in Mexico City, though at the request of the Mexicans, the treaty signing took place in Guadalupe Hidalgo, a small town near Mexico City. Trist was willing to allow Mexico to keep Baja California, as his instructions allowed, but successfully haggled for the inclusion of the important harbor of San Diego in a cession of Alta California. Provisions included the Rio Grande border and a \$15 million payment to Mexico. On February 2, 1848, Trist and the Mexican delegation signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Polk received the document on February 19, and, after the Cabinet met on the 20th, decided he had no choice but to accept it. If he turned it down, with the House by then controlled by the Whigs, there was no assurance Congress would vote funding to continue the war. Both Buchanan and Walker dissented, wanting more land from Mexico, a position with which the President was sympathetic, though he considered Buchanan's view motivated by his ambition.
Some senators opposed the treaty because they wanted to take no Mexican territory; others hesitated because of the irregular nature of Trist's negotiations. Polk waited in suspense for two weeks as the Senate considered it, sometimes hearing that it would likely be defeated and that Buchanan and Walker were working against it. He was relieved when the two Cabinet officers lobbied on behalf of the treaty. On March 10, the Senate ratified the treaty in a 38–14 vote, a vote that cut across partisan and geographic lines. The Senate made some modifications to the treaty before ratification, and Polk worried that the Mexican government would reject them. On June 7, Polk learned that Mexico had ratified the treaty. Polk declared the treaty in effect as of July 4, 1848, thus ending the war. With the acquisition of California, Polk had accomplished all four of his major presidential goals. With the exception of the territory acquired by the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, and some later minor adjustments, the territorial acquisitions under Polk established the modern borders of the Contiguous United States.
#### Postwar and the territories
Polk was anxious to establish a territorial government for Oregon but the matter became embroiled in the arguments over slavery, though few thought Oregon suitable for that institution. Bills to establish a territorial government passed the House twice but died in the Senate. By the time Congress met again in December, California and New Mexico were in U.S. hands, and Polk in his annual message urged the establishment of territorial governments in all three. The Missouri Compromise had settled the issue of the geographic reach of slavery within the Louisiana Purchase by prohibiting slavery in states north of 36°30′ latitude, and Polk sought to extend this line into the newly acquired territory. This would have made slavery illegal in Oregon and San Francisco but allowed it in Los Angeles. Such an extension of slavery was defeated in the House by a bipartisan alliance of Northerners. In 1848 Polk signed a bill to establish the Territory of Oregon and prohibit slavery in it.
In December 1848, Polk sought to establish territorial governments in California and New Mexico, a task made especially urgent by the onset of the California Gold Rush. The divisive issue of slavery blocked the idea. Finally in the Compromise of 1850 the issue was resolved.
Polk had misgivings about a bill creating the Department of the Interior (March 3, 1849). He feared the federal government usurping power over public lands from the states. Nevertheless he signed the bill.
#### Other initiatives
Polk's ambassador to the Republic of New Granada, Benjamin Alden Bidlack, negotiated the Mallarino–Bidlack Treaty. Though Washington had initially only sought to remove tariffs on American goods, Bidlack and New Granadan's Foreign Minister negotiated a broad agreement that deepened military and trade ties. A U.S. guarantee of New Granada's sovereignty over the Isthmus of Panama was also included. The treaty was ratified in 1848 and in the long run it facilitated the Panama Canal, built in the early 20th century. It also allowed for the construction of the Panama Railway, which opened in 1855. The railway, built and operated by Americans and protected by the U.S. military, gave a quicker, safer journey to California and Oregon. The agreement was the only alliance Washington made in the 19th century. It established a strong American role in Central America and was a counterweight to British influence there.
In mid-1848, President Polk authorized his ambassador to Spain, Romulus Mitchell Saunders, to negotiate the purchase of Cuba and offer Spain up to \$100 million, a large sum at the time for one territory, equal to \$ in present-day terms. Cuba was close to the United States and had slavery, so the idea appealed to Southerners but was unwelcome in the North. However, Spain was still making profits in Cuba (notably in sugar, molasses, rum and tobacco), and thus the Spanish government rejected Saunders's overtures. Though Polk was eager to acquire Cuba, he refused to support the filibuster expedition of Narciso López, who sought to invade and take over the island as a prelude to annexation.
### Domestic policy
#### Fiscal policy
In his inaugural address, Polk called upon Congress to re-establish the Independent Treasury System under which government funds were held in the Treasury and not in banks or other financial institutions. President Van Buren had previously established a similar system, but it had been abolished during the Tyler administration. Polk made clear his opposition to a national bank in his inaugural address, and in his first annual message to Congress in December 1845, he called for the government to keep its funds itself. Congress was slow to act; the House passed a bill in April 1846 and the Senate in August, both without a single Whig vote. Polk signed the Independent Treasury Act into law on August 6, 1846. The act provided that the public revenues were to be retained in the Treasury building and in sub-treasuries in various cities, separate from private or state banks. The system would remain in place until the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913.
Polk's other major domestic initiative was the lowering of the tariff. Polk directed Secretary of the Treasury Robert Walker to draft a new and lower tariff, which Polk submitted to Congress. After intense lobbying by both sides, the bill passed the House and, in a close vote that required Vice President Dallas to break a tie, the Senate in July 1846. Dallas, although from protectionist Pennsylvania, voted for the bill, having decided his best political prospects lay in supporting the administration. Polk signed the Walker Tariff into law, substantially reducing the rates that had been set by the Tariff of 1842. The reduction of tariffs in the United States and the repeal of the Corn Laws in Great Britain led to a boom in Anglo-American trade.
#### Development of the country
Congress passed the Rivers and Harbors Bill in 1846 to provide \$500,000 to improve port facilities, but Polk vetoed it. Polk believed that the bill was unconstitutional because it unfairly favored particular areas, including ports that had no foreign trade. Polk considered internal improvements to be matters for the states, and feared that passing the bill would encourage legislators to compete for favors for their home district—a type of corruption that he felt would spell doom to the virtue of the republic. In this regard he followed his hero Jackson, who had vetoed the Maysville Road Bill in 1830 on similar grounds.
Opposed by conviction to Federal funding for internal improvements, Polk stood strongly against all such bills. Congress, in 1847, passed another internal improvements bill; he pocket vetoed it and sent Congress a full veto message when it met in December. Similar bills continued to advance in Congress in 1848, though none reached his desk. When he came to the Capitol to sign bills on March 3, 1849, the last day of the congressional session and his final full day in office, he feared that an internal improvements bill would pass Congress, and he brought with him a draft veto message. The bill did not pass, so it was not needed, but feeling the draft had been ably written, he had it preserved among his papers.
Authoritative word of the discovery of gold in California did not arrive in Washington until after the 1848 election, by which time Polk was a lame duck. Polk's political adversaries had claimed California was too far away to be useful and was not worth the price paid to Mexico. The President was delighted by the news, seeing it as validation of his stance on expansion, and referred to the discovery several times in his final annual message to Congress that December. Shortly thereafter, actual samples of the California gold arrived, and Polk sent a special message to Congress on the subject. The message, confirming less authoritative reports, caused large numbers of people to move to California, both from the U.S. and abroad, thus helping to spark the California Gold Rush.
#### Judicial appointments
Polk appointed the following justices to the U.S. Supreme Court:
The 1844 death of Justice Henry Baldwin left a vacant place on the Supreme Court, but Tyler had been unable to get the Senate to confirm a nominee. At the time, it was the custom to have a geographic balance on the Supreme Court, and Baldwin had been from Pennsylvania. Polk's efforts to fill Baldwin's seat became embroiled in Pennsylvania politics and the efforts of factional leaders to secure the lucrative post of Collector of Customs for the Port of Philadelphia. As Polk attempted to find his way through the minefield of Pennsylvania politics, a second position on the high court became vacant with the death, in September 1845, of Justice Joseph Story; his replacement was expected to come from his native New England. Because Story's death had occurred while the Senate was not in session, Polk was able to make a recess appointment, choosing Senator Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire, and when the Senate reconvened in December 1845, Woodbury was confirmed. Polk's initial nominee for Baldwin's seat, George W. Woodward, was rejected by the Senate in January 1846, in large part due to the opposition of Buchanan and Pennsylvania Senator Simon Cameron.
Despite Polk's anger at Buchanan, he eventually offered the Secretary of State the seat, but Buchanan, after some indecision, turned it down. Polk subsequently nominated Robert Cooper Grier of Pittsburgh, who won confirmation. Justice Woodbury died in 1851, but Grier served until 1870 and in the slavery case of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) wrote an opinion stating that slaves were property and could not sue.
Polk appointed eight other federal judges, one to the United States Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, and seven to various United States district courts.
## Election of 1848
Honoring his pledge to serve only one term, Polk declined to seek re-election. At the 1848 Democratic National Convention, Lewis Cass was nominated. The 1848 Whig National Convention nominated Zachary Taylor for president and former congressman Millard Fillmore of New York for vice president. Martin Van Buren led a breakaway Free Soil group from the Democrats. Polk was surprised and disappointed by his former ally's political conversion and worried about the divisiveness of a sectional party devoted to abolition. Polk did not give speeches for Cass, remaining at his desk at the White House. He did remove some Van Buren supporters from federal office during the campaign.
Taylor won the three-way election with a plurality of the popular vote and a majority of the electoral vote. Polk was disappointed by the outcome as he had a low opinion of Taylor, seeing the general as someone with poor judgment and few opinions on important public matters. Nevertheless, Polk observed tradition and welcomed President-elect Taylor to Washington, hosting him at a gala White House dinner. Polk departed the White House on March 3, leaving behind him a clean desk, though he worked from his hotel or the Capitol on last-minute appointments and bill signings. He attended Taylor's inauguration on March 5 (March 4, the presidential inauguration day until 1937, fell on a Sunday, and thus the ceremony was postponed a day), and though he was unimpressed with the new president, wished him the best.
## Post-presidency and death (1849)
Polk's time in the White House took its toll on his health. Full of enthusiasm and vigor when he entered office, Polk left the presidency exhausted by his years of public service. He left Washington on March 6 for a pre-arranged triumphal tour of the Southern United States, to end in Nashville. Polk had two years previously arranged to buy a house there, afterwards dubbed Polk Place, that had once belonged to his mentor, Felix Grundy.
James and Sarah Polk progressed down the Atlantic coast, and then westward through the Deep South. He was enthusiastically received and banqueted. By the time the Polks reached Alabama, he was suffering from a bad cold, and soon became concerned by reports of cholera—a passenger on Polk's riverboat died of it, and it was rumored to be common in New Orleans, but it was too late to change plans. Worried about his health, he would have departed the city quickly but was overwhelmed by Louisiana hospitality. Several passengers on the riverboat up the Mississippi died of the disease, and Polk felt so ill that he went ashore for four days, staying in a hotel. A doctor assured him he did not have cholera, and Polk made the final leg, arriving in Nashville on April 2 to a huge reception.
After a visit to James's mother in Columbia, the Polks settled into Polk Place. The exhausted former president seemed to gain new life, but in early June, he fell ill again, by most accounts of cholera. Attended by several doctors, he lingered for several days and chose to be baptized into the Methodist Church, which he had long admired, though his mother arrived from Columbia with her Presbyterian clergyman, and his wife was also a devout Presbyterian. On the afternoon of Friday, June 15, Polk died at his Polk Place home in Nashville, Tennessee at the age of 53. According to traditional accounts, his last words before he died were "I love you, Sarah, for all eternity, I love you", spoken to Sarah Polk. Borneman noted that whether or not they were spoken, there was nothing in Polk's life that would make the sentiment false.
Polk's funeral was held at the McKendree Methodist Church in Nashville. Following his death, Sarah Polk lived at Polk Place for 42 years and died on August 14, 1891, at the age of 87. Their house, Polk Place, was demolished in 1901.
## Burials
Polk's remains have been moved twice. After his death, he was buried in what is now Nashville City Cemetery, due to a legal requirement related to his infectious disease death. Polk was then moved to a tomb on the grounds of Polk Place (as specified in his will) in 1850.
Then, in 1893, the bodies of James and Sarah Polk were relocated to their current resting place on the grounds of the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville. In March 2017, the Tennessee Senate approved a resolution considered a "first step" toward relocating the Polks' remains to the family home in Columbia. Such a move would require approval by state lawmakers, the courts, and the Tennessee Historical Commission. A year later, a renewed plan to reinter Polk was defeated by Tennessee lawmakers before being taken up again and approved, and allowed to go through by the non-signature of Tennessee governor Bill Haslam. The state's Capitol Commission heard arguments over the issue in November 2018, during which the THC reiterated its opposition to the tomb relocation, and a vote was delayed indefinitely.
## Polk and slavery
Polk owned slaves for most of his adult life. His father, Samuel Polk, in 1827 left Polk more than 8,000 acres (32 km<sup>2</sup>) of land and divided about 53 enslaved people among his widow and children in his will. James inherited twenty slaves, either directly or from deceased brothers. In 1831, he became an absentee cotton planter, sending enslaved people to clear plantation land that his father had left him near Somerville, Tennessee. Four years later Polk sold his Somerville plantation and, together with his brother-in-law, bought 920 acres (3.7 km<sup>2</sup>) of land, a cotton plantation near Coffeeville, Mississippi, hoping to increase his income. The land in Mississippi was richer than that in Somerville, and Polk transferred slaves there, taking care to conceal from them that they were to be sent south. From the start of 1839, Polk, having bought out his brother-in-law, owned all of the Mississippi plantations, and ran it on a mostly absentee basis for the rest of his life. He occasionally visited—for example, he spent much of April 1844 on his Mississippi plantation, right before the Democratic convention.
Adding to the inherited slaves, in 1831, Polk purchased five more, mostly buying them in Kentucky, and expending \$1,870; the youngest had a recorded age of 11. As older children sold for a higher price, slave sellers routinely lied about age. Between 1834 and 1835, he bought five more, aged from 2 to 37, the youngest a granddaughter of the oldest. The amount expended was \$2,250. In 1839, he bought eight slaves from his brother William at a cost of \$5,600. This represented three young adults and most of a family, though not including the father, whom James Polk had previously owned, and who had been sold to a slave trader as he had repeatedly tried to escape his enslavement.
The expenses of four campaigns (three for governor, one for the presidency) in six years kept Polk from making more slave purchases until after he was living in the White House. In an era when the presidential salary was expected to cover wages for the White House servants, Polk replaced them with slaves from his home in Tennessee. Polk did not purchase enslaved people with his presidential salary, likely for political reasons. Instead, he reinvested earnings from his plantation in the purchase of slaves, enjoining secrecy on his agent: "that as my private business does not concern the public, you will keep it to yourself".
Polk saw the plantation as his route to a comfortable existence after his presidency for himself and his wife; he did not intend to return to the practice of law. Hoping the increased labor force would increase his retirement income, he purchased seven slaves in 1846, through an agent, aged roughly between 12 and 17. The 17-year-old and one of the 12-year-olds were purchased together at an estate sale; the agent within weeks resold the younger boy to Polk's profit. The year 1847 saw the purchase of nine more. Three he purchased from Gideon Pillow, and his agent purchased six enslaved people aged between 10 and 20. By the time of the purchase from Pillow, the Mexican War had begun and Polk sent payment with the letter in which he offered Pillow a commission in the Army. The purchase from Pillow was a man Polk had previously owned and had sold for being a disruption, and his wife and child. None of the other enslaved people Polk purchased as president, all younger than 20, came with a parent, and as only in the one case were two slaves bought together, most likely none had an accompanying sibling as each faced life on Polk's plantation.
Discipline for those owned by Polk varied over time. At the Tennessee plantation, he employed an overseer named Herbert Biles, who was said to be relatively indulgent. Biles's illness in 1833 resulted in Polk replacing him with Ephraim Beanland, who tightened discipline and increased work. Polk backed his overseer, returning escapees who complained of beatings and other harsh treatment, "even though every report suggested that the overseer was a heartless brute". Beanland was hired for the Mississippi plantation but was soon dismissed by Polk's partner, who deemed Beanland too harsh as the slaves undertook the arduous task of clearing the timber from the new plantation so it could be used for cotton farming. His replacement was discharged after a year for being too indulgent; the next died of dysentery in 1839. Others followed, and it was not until 1845 that Polk found a satisfactory overseer, John Mairs, who remained the rest of Polk's life and was still working at the plantation for Sarah Polk in 1860 when the widow sold a half-share in many of her slaves. There had been a constant stream of runaways under Mairs' predecessors, many seeking protection at the plantation of Polk relatives or friends; only one ran away between the time of Mairs' hiring and the end of 1847, but the overseer had to report three absconded slaves (including the one who had fled earlier) to Polk in 1848 and 1849.
Polk's will, dated February 28, 1849, a few days before the end of his presidency, contained the nonbinding expectation that his slaves were to be freed when both he and Sarah Polk were dead. The Mississippi plantation was expected to be the support of Sarah Polk during her widowhood. Sarah Polk lived until 1891, but the slaves were freed in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States. By selling a half-interest in the slaves in 1860, Sarah Polk had given up the sole power to free them, and it is unlikely that her new partner, having paid \$28,500 for a half-interest in the plantation and its slaves, would have allowed the laborers to go free had she died while slavery was legal.
Like Jackson, Polk saw the politics of slavery as a side issue compared to more important matters such as territorial expansion and economic policy. The issue of slavery became increasingly polarizing during the 1840s, and Polk's expansionary successes redoubled its divisiveness. During his presidency, many abolitionists harshly criticized him as an instrument of the "Slave Power", and claimed that spreading slavery was the reason he supported Texas Annexation and later war with Mexico. Polk did support the expansion of slavery's realm, with his views informed by his own family's experience of settling Tennessee, bringing slaves with them. He believed in Southern rights, meaning both the right of slave states not to have that institution interfered with by the Federal government and the right of individual Southerners to bring their slaves with them into the new territory. Though Polk opposed the Wilmot Proviso, he also condemned southern agitation on the issue, and he accused both northern and southern leaders of attempting to use the slavery issue for political gain.
## Legacy and historical view
After his death, Polk's historic reputation was initially formed by the attacks made on him in his own time. Whig politicians claimed that he was drawn from well-deserved obscurity. Sam Houston is said to have observed that Polk, a teetotaler, was "a victim of the use of water as a beverage". Little was published about him but two biographies released in the wake of his death. Polk was not again the subject of a major biography until 1922 when Eugene I. McCormac published James K. Polk: A Political Biography. McCormac relied heavily on Polk's presidential diary, first published in 1909. When historians began ranking the presidents in 1948, Polk ranked tenth in Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.'s poll, and has subsequently ranked eighth in Schlesinger's 1962 poll, ninth in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s 1996 poll, and 14th in the 2017 survey by C-SPAN.
James Polk is today widely seen as a successful president; he is regarded as a man of destiny and a political chess master, who, through extraordinary diligence, worked to promote American democracy. Borneman deemed Polk the most effective president prior to the Civil War and noted that Polk expanded the power of the presidency, especially in its power as commander in chief and its oversight over the Executive Branch. Steven G. Calabresi and Christopher S. Yoo, in their history of presidential power, praised Polk's conduct of the Mexican War, "it seems unquestionable that his management of state affairs during this conflict was one of the strongest examples since Jackson of the use of presidential power to direct specifically the conduct of subordinate officers."
Historian John C. Pinheiro, analyzing Polk's impact and legacy, wrote that:
> Polk accomplished nearly everything that he said he wanted to accomplish as President and everything he had promised in his party's platform: acquisition of the Oregon Territory, California, and the Territory of New Mexico; the positive settlement of the Texas border dispute; lower tariff rates; the establishment of a new federal depository system; and the strengthening of the executive office. He masterfully kept open lines of communication with Congress, established the Department of the Interior, built up an administrative press, and conducted himself as a representative of the whole people. Polk came into the presidency with a focused political agenda and a clear set of convictions. He left office the most successful President since George Washington in the accomplishment of his goals.
Bergeron noted that the matters that Polk settled, he settled for his time. The questions of the banking system, and of the tariff, which Polk had made two of the main issues of his presidency, were not significantly revised until the 1860s. Similarly, the Gadsden Purchase, and that of Alaska (1867), were the only major U.S. expansions until the 1890s.
Paul H. Bergeron wrote in his study of Polk's presidency: "Virtually everyone remembers Polk and his expansionist successes. He produced a new map of the United States, which fulfilled a continent-wide vision." "To look at that map," Robert W. Merry concluded, "and to take in the western and southwestern expanse included in it, is to see the magnitude of Polk's presidential accomplishments." Amy Greenberg, in her history of the Mexican War, found Polk's legacy to be more than territorial, "during a single brilliant term, he accomplished a feat that earlier presidents would have considered impossible. With the help of his wife, Sarah, he masterminded, provoked and successfully prosecuted a war that turned the United States into a world power." Borneman noted that in securing this expansion, Polk did not consider the likely effect on Mexicans and Native Americans, "That ignorance may well be debated on moral grounds, but it cannot take away Polk's stunning political achievement." James A. Rawley wrote in his American National Biography piece on Polk, "he added extensive territory to the United States, including Upper California and its valuable ports, and bequeathed a legacy of a nation poised on the Pacific rim prepared to emerge as a superpower in future generations".
Historians have criticized Polk for not perceiving that his territorial gains set the table for civil war. Pletcher stated that Polk, like others of his time, failed "to understand that sectionalism and expansion had formed a new, explosive compound". Fred I. Greenstein, in his journal article on Polk, noted that Polk "lacked a far-seeing awareness of the problems that were bound to arise over the status of slavery in the territory acquired from Mexico" William Dusinberre, in his volume on Polk as slave owner, suggested "that Polk's deep personal involvement in the plantation slavery system ... colored his stance on slavery-related issues".
Greenberg noted that Polk's war served as the training ground for that later conflict:
> The conflict Polk engineered became the transformative event of the era. It not only changed the nation but also created a new generation of leaders, for good and for ill. In the military, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall Jackson, George Meade, and Jefferson Davis all first experienced military command in Mexico. It was there that they learned the basis of the strategy and tactics that dominated the Civil War.
## See also
- Presidents of the United States on U.S. postage stamps
|
226,211 |
Glacier National Park (U.S.)
| 1,173,840,973 |
Park in Montana on the Canadian border
|
[
"1910 establishments in Montana",
"Biosphere reserves of the United States",
"Civilian Conservation Corps in Montana",
"Geology of Montana",
"Glacier National Park (U.S.)",
"Glaciers of North America",
"History of the Rocky Mountains",
"Lewis Range",
"Livingston Range",
"National parks in Montana",
"National parks of the Rocky Mountains",
"Protected areas established in 1910",
"Protected areas of Flathead County, Montana",
"Protected areas of Glacier County, Montana",
"Rocky Mountains",
"World Heritage Sites in the United States"
] |
Glacier National Park is an American national park located in northwestern Montana, on the Canada–United States border, adjacent to the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. The park encompasses more than 1 million acres (4,000 km<sup>2</sup>) and includes parts of two mountain ranges (sub-ranges of the Rocky Mountains), more than 130 named lakes, more than 1,000 different species of plants, and hundreds of species of animals. This vast pristine ecosystem is the centerpiece of what has been referred to as the "Crown of the Continent Ecosystem," a region of protected land encompassing 16,000 sq mi (41,000 km<sup>2</sup>).
The region that became Glacier National Park was first inhabited by Native Americans. Upon the arrival of European explorers, it was dominated by the Blackfeet in the east and the Flathead in the western regions. Under pressure, the Blackfeet ceded the mountainous parts of their treaty lands in 1895 to the federal government; it later became part of the park. Soon after the establishment of the park on May 11, 1910, a number of hotels and chalets were constructed by the Great Northern Railway. These historic hotels and chalets are listed as National Historic Landmarks and a total of 350 locations are on the National Register of Historic Places. By 1932 work was completed on the Going-to-the-Sun Road, later designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, which provided motorists easier access to the heart of the park.
Glacier National Park's mountains began forming 170 million years ago when ancient rocks were forced eastward up and over much younger rock strata. Known as the Lewis Overthrust, these sedimentary rocks are considered to have some of the finest examples of early life fossils on Earth. The current shapes of the Lewis and Livingston mountain ranges and positioning and size of the lakes show the telltale evidence of massive glacial action, which carved U-shaped valleys and left behind moraines that impounded water, creating lakes. Of the estimated 150 glaciers over 25 acres in size which existed in the park in the mid-19th century during the late Little Ice Age, only 25 active glaciers remained by 2010. Scientists studying the glaciers in the park have estimated that all the active glaciers may disappear by 2030 if current climate patterns persist.
Glacier National Park still maintains almost all of its modern, original native plant and animal species (since discovery by Europeans). Large mammals such as American black bear, grizzly bear, bighorn sheep, elk, moose, mountain lion and mountain goats, as well as gray wolf, wolverine and Canadian lynx inhabit the park. Hundreds of species of birds, more than a dozen fish species, and a quite a few reptiles and amphibian species have been documented. Species of butterflies, pollinating insects and other invertebrates range in the thousands.
The park has numerous ecosystems, ranging from prairie to tundra. The easternmost forests of western redcedar and hemlock grow in the southwest portion of the park. Forest fires are annually common in the park. There has been a fire every year of the park's existence except for in 1964. In total, 64 fires occurred in 1936 alone, the most on-record. In 2003, six fires burned approximately 136,000 acres (550 km<sup>2</sup>), more than 13% of the park.
Glacier National Park borders Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada—the two parks are known as the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park and were designated as the world's first International Peace Park in 1932. Both parks were designated by the United Nations as Biosphere Reserves in 1976, and in 1995 as World Heritage Sites. In April 2017, the joint park received a provisional Gold Tier designation as Waterton-Glacier International Dark Sky Park through the International Dark Sky Association, the first transboundary dark sky park.
## History
According to archeological evidence, Native Americans first arrived in the Glacier area some 10,000 years ago. The earliest occupants with lineage to current tribes were the Flathead (Salish) and Kootenai, Shoshone, and Cheyenne. The Blackfeet lived on the eastern slopes of what later became the park, as well as the Great Plains immediately to the east. The park region provided the Blackfeet shelter from the harsh winter winds of the plains, allowing them to supplement their traditional bison hunts with other game meat. Today, the Blackfeet Indian Reservation borders the park in the east, while the Flathead Indian Reservation is located west and south of the park. When the Blackfeet Reservation was first established in 1855 by the Lame Bull Treaty, it included the eastern area of the current park up to the Continental Divide. To the Blackfeet, the mountains of this area, especially Chief Mountain and the region in the southeast at Two Medicine, were considered the "Backbone of the World" and were frequented during vision quests. In 1895 Chief White Calf of the Blackfeet authorized the sale of the mountain area, some 800,000 acres (3,200 km<sup>2</sup>), to the U.S. government for \$1.5 million, with the understanding that they would maintain usage rights to the land for hunting as long as the ceded stripe will be public land of the United States. This established the current boundary between the park and the reservation.
While exploring the Marias River in 1806, the Lewis and Clark Expedition came within 50 mi (80 km) of the area that is now the park. A series of explorations after 1850 helped to shape the understanding of the area that later became the park. In 1885 George Bird Grinnell hired the noted explorer (and later well-regarded author) James Willard Schultz to guide him on a hunting expedition into what would later become the park. After several more trips to the region, Grinnell became so inspired by the scenery that he spent the next two decades working to establish a national park. In 1901 Grinnell wrote a description of the region in which he referred to it as the "Crown of the Continent." His efforts to protect the land made him the premier contributor to this cause. A few years after Grinnell first visited, Henry L. Stimson and two companions, including a Blackfoot, climbed the steep east face of Chief Mountain in 1892.
In 1891, the Great Northern Railway crossed the Continental Divide at Marias Pass 5,213 ft (1,589 m), which is along the southern boundary of the park. In an effort to attract passengers, the Great Northern soon advertised the splendors of the region to the public. The company lobbied the United States Congress. In 1897 the park was designated as a forest preserve. Under the forest designation, mining was still allowed but was not commercially successful. Meanwhile, proponents of protecting the region kept up their efforts. In 1910, under the influence of the Boone and Crockett Club, and spearheaded by George Bird Grinnell and Louis W. Hill, president of the Great Northern, a bill was introduced into the U.S. Congress which designated the region a national park. This bill was signed into law by President William Howard Taft in 1910. In 1910 Grinnell wrote, "This Park, the country owes to the Boone and Crockett Club, whose members discovered the region, suggested it being set aside, caused the bill to be introduced into congress and awakened interest in it all over the country".
From May until August 1910, the forest reserve supervisor, Fremont Nathan Haines, managed the park's resources as the first acting superintendent. In August 1910, William Logan was appointed the park's first superintendent. While the forest reserve designation confirmed the traditional usage rights of the Blackfeet, the enabling legislation of the national park does not mention the guarantees to the Native Americans. The United States government's position was that with the special designation as a National Park the mountains ceded their multi-purpose public land status and the former rights ceased to exist as the Court of Claims confirmed it in 1935. Some Blackfeet held that their traditional usage rights still exist de jure. In the 1890s, armed standoffs were avoided narrowly several times.
The Great Northern Railway, under the supervision of president Louis W. Hill, built a number of hotels and chalets throughout the park in the 1910s to promote tourism. These buildings, constructed and operated by a Great Northern subsidiary called the Glacier Park Company, were modeled on Swiss architecture as part of Hill's plan to portray Glacier as "America's Switzerland". Hill was especially interested in sponsoring artists to come to the park, building tourist lodges that displayed their work. His hotels in the park never made a profit but they attracted thousands of visitors who came via the Great Northern. Vacationers commonly took pack trips on horseback between the lodges or utilized the seasonal stagecoach routes to gain access to the Many Glacier areas in the northeast.
The chalets, built between 1910 and 1915, included Belton, St. Mary, Going-to-the-Sun, Many Glacier, Two Medicine, Sperry, Granite Park, Cut Bank, and Gunsight Lake. The railway also built Glacier Park Lodge, adjacent to the park on its east side, and the Many Glacier Hotel on the east shore of Swiftcurrent Lake. Louis Hill personally selected the sites for all of these buildings, choosing each for their dramatic scenic backdrops and views. Another developer, John Lewis, built the Lewis Glacier Hotel on Lake McDonald in 1913–1914. The Great Northern Railway bought the hotel in 1930 and it was later renamed Lake McDonald Lodge. The Great Northern Railway also established four tent camps at Red Eagle Lake, Cosley Lake, Fifty Mountain and Goat Haunt. The chalets and tent camps were located roughly 10–18 miles apart, and were connected by a network of trails that allowed visitors to tour Glacier's backcountry on foot or horseback. These trails were also constructed by the railroad. "Because of a lack of federal funds Great Northern assumed financial responsibility for all trail construction during this period, but was eventually reimbursed as funding became available." Today, only Sperry, Granite Park, and Belton Chalets are still in operation, while a building formerly belonging to Two Medicine Chalet is now Two Medicine Store. The surviving chalet and hotel buildings within the park are now designated as National Historic Landmarks. In total, 350 buildings and structures within the park are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including ranger stations, backcountry patrol cabins, fire lookouts, and concession facilities. In 2017, Sperry Chalet closed early for the season due to the Sprague Fire which subsequently burned the entire interior portions of the structure, leaving only the stone exterior standing. Due to damage, the chalet was closed indefinitely and while the exterior stonework was stabilized in the fall of 2017. The rebuilding process was completed during the summers of 2018 and 2019, and a reopening ceremony was held in February 2020.
After the park was well established and visitors began to rely more on automobiles, work was begun on the 53-mile (85 km) long Going-to-the-Sun Road, completed in 1932. Also known simply as the Sun Road, the road bisects the park and is the only route that ventures deep into the park, going over the Continental Divide at Logan Pass, 6,646 ft (2,026 m) at the midway point. The Sun Road is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places and in 1985 was designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. Another route, along the southern boundary between the park and National Forests, is US Route 2, which crosses the Continental Divide at Marias Pass and connects the towns of West Glacier and East Glacier.
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal relief agency for young men, played a major role between 1933 and 1942 in developing both Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park. CCC projects included reforestation, campground development, trail construction, fire hazard reduction, and fire-fighting work. The increase in motor vehicle traffic through the park during the 1930s resulted in the construction of new concession facilities at Swiftcurrent and Rising Sun, both designed for automobile-based tourism. These early auto camps are now also listed on the National Register.
## Park management
Glacier National Park is managed by the National Park Service, with the park's headquarters in West Glacier, Montana. Visitation to Glacier National Park averaged about 3.5 million visitors in 2019, which surpassed its 2017 peak of 3.31 million. Glacier has had at least 2 million annual visitors consistently since 2012, but has broken annual attendance records from 2014 to 2018.
Glacier National Park finished with a \$13.803 million budget in 2016, with a planned budget of \$13.777 million for 2017. In anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the park in 2010, major reconstruction of the Going-to-the-Sun Road was completed. The Federal Highway Administration managed the reconstruction project in cooperation with the National Park Service. Some rehabilitation of major structures such as visitor centers and historic hotels, as well as improvements in wastewater treatment facilities and campgrounds, are expected to be completed by the anniversary date. The National Park Service is engaged in fishery studies for Lake McDonald to assess status and develop protection programs to enhance native fish populations. The restoration of park trails, education and youth programs, park improvements and many community programs have been planned and are ongoing.
The National Park Service mandate is to "... preserve and protect natural and cultural resources". The Organic Act of August 25, 1916 established the National Park Service as a federal agency. One major section of the Act has often been summarized as the "Mission", "... to promote and regulate the use of the ... national parks ... which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." In keeping with this mandate, hunting is illegal in the park, as are mining, logging, and the removal of natural or cultural resources. Additionally, oil and gas exploration and extraction are not permitted. These restrictions, however, caused a lot of conflict with the adjoining Blackfeet Indian Reservation. When they sold the land to the United States government, it was with the stipulation of being able to maintain their usage rights of the area, many of which (such as hunting) had come into conflict with these regulations.
In 1974, a wilderness study was submitted to Congress which identified 95% of the area of the park as qualifying for wilderness designation. Unlike a few other parks, Glacier National Park has yet to be protected as wilderness, but National Park Service policy requires that identified areas listed in the report be managed as wilderness until Congress renders a full decision. Ninety-three percent of Glacier National Park is managed as wilderness, even though it has not been officially designated.
## Geography and geology
The park is bordered on the north by Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, and the Flathead Provincial Forest and Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park in British Columbia. To the west, the north fork of the Flathead River forms the western boundary, while its middle fork is part of the southern boundary. The Blackfeet Indian Reservation provides most of the eastern boundary. The Lewis and Clark and the Flathead National Forests form the southern and western boundary. The remote Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex is located in the two forests immediately to the south.
The park contains over 700 lakes, but only 131 have been named as of 2016. Lake McDonald on the western side of the park is the longest at 10 mi (16 km) and the deepest at 464 ft (141 m). Numerous smaller lakes, known as tarns, are located in cirques formed by glacial erosion. Some of these lakes, like Avalanche Lake and Cracker Lake, are colored an opaque turquoise by suspended glacial silt, which also causes a number of streams to run milky white. Glacier National Park lakes remain cold year-round, with temperatures rarely above 50 °F (10 °C) at their surface. Cold water lakes such as these support little plankton growth, ensuring that the lake waters are remarkably clear. However, the lack of plankton lowers the rate of pollution filtration, so pollutants tend to linger longer. Consequently, the lakes are considered environmental bellwethers as they can be quickly affected by even minor increases in pollutants.
Two hundred waterfalls are scattered throughout the park. However, during drier times of the year, many of these are reduced to a trickle. The largest falls include those in the Two Medicine region, McDonald Falls in the McDonald Valley, and Swiftcurrent Falls in the Many Glacier area, which is easily observable and close to the Many Glacier Hotel. One of the tallest waterfalls is Bird Woman Falls, which drops 492 ft (150 m) from a hanging valley beneath the north slope of Mount Oberlin.
### Geology
The rocks found in the park are primarily sedimentary rocks of the Belt Supergroup. They were deposited in shallow seas over 1.6 billion to 800 million years ago. During the formation of the Rocky Mountains 170 million years ago, one region of rocks now known as the Lewis Overthrust was forced eastward 50 mi (80 km). This overthrust was several miles (kilometers) thick and hundreds of miles (kilometers) long. This resulted in older rocks being displaced over newer ones, so the overlying Proterozoic rocks are between 1.4 and 1.5 billion years older than Cretaceous age rocks they now rest on.
One of the most dramatic evidences of this overthrust is visible in the form of Chief Mountain, an isolated peak on the edge of the eastern boundary of the park rising 2,500 ft (800 m) above the Great Plains. There are six mountains in the park over 10,000 ft (3,000 m) in elevation, with Mount Cleveland at 10,466 ft (3,190 m) being the tallest. Appropriately named Triple Divide Peak sends waters towards the Pacific Ocean, Hudson Bay, and Gulf of Mexico watersheds. This peak can effectively be considered to be the apex of the North American continent, although the mountain is only 8,020 ft (2,444 m) above sea level.
The rocks in Glacier National Park are the best preserved Proterozoic sedimentary rocks in the world, with some of the world's most fruitful sources for records of early life. Sedimentary rocks of similar age located in other regions have been greatly altered by mountain building and other metamorphic changes; consequently, fossils are less common and more difficult to observe. The rocks in the park preserve such features as millimeter-scale lamination, ripple marks, mud cracks, salt-crystal casts, raindrop impressions, oolites, and other sedimentary bedding characteristics. Six fossilized species of stromatolites, early organisms consisting of primarily blue-green algae, have been documented and dated at about 1 billion years. The discovery of the Appekunny Formation, a well-preserved rock stratum in the park, pushed back the established date for the origination of animal life a full billion years. This rock formation has bedding structures which are believed to be the remains of the earliest identified metazoan (animal) life on Earth.
### Glaciers
Glacier National Park is dominated by mountains which were carved into their present shapes by the huge glaciers of the last ice age. These glaciers have largely disappeared over the last 12,000 years. Evidence of widespread glacial action is found throughout the park in the form of U-shaped valleys, cirques, arêtes, and large outflow lakes radiating like fingers from the base of the highest peaks. Since the end of the ice ages, various warming and cooling trends have occurred. The last recent cooling trend was during the Little Ice Age, which took place approximately between 1550 and 1850. During the Little Ice Age, the glaciers in the park expanded and advanced, although to nowhere near as great an extent as they had during the Ice Age.
During the middle of the 20th century, examining the maps and photographs from the previous century provided clear evidence that the 150 glaciers known to have existed in the park a hundred years earlier had greatly retreated and disappeared altogether in many cases. Repeat photography of the glaciers, such as the pictures taken of Grinnell Glacier between 1938 and 2015 as shown, help to provide visual confirmation of the extent of glacier retreat.
In the 1980s, the U.S. Geological Survey began a more systematic study of the remaining glaciers, which has continued to the present day. By 2010, 37 glaciers remained, but only 25 of them were at least 25 acres (0.10 km<sup>2</sup>) in area and therefore still considered active. Based on the warming trend of the early 2000s, scientists had estimated that the park's remaining glaciers would melt by 2020; however, a later estimate stated that the glaciers may be gone by 2030. This glacier retreat follows a worldwide pattern that has accelerated even more since 1980. Without a major climatic change in which cooler and moister weather returns and persists, the mass balance, which is the accumulation rate versus the ablation (melting) rate of glaciers, will continue to be negative and the glaciers have been projected to disappear, leaving behind only barren rock eventually.
After the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850, the glaciers in the park retreated moderately until the 1910s. Between 1917 and 1941, the retreat rate accelerated and was as high as 330 ft (100 m) per year for some glaciers. A slight cooling trend from the 1940s until 1979 helped to slow the rate of retreat and, in a few cases, even advanced the glaciers over ten meters. However, during the 1980s, the glaciers in the park began a steady period of loss of glacial ice, which continues as of 2010. In 1850, the glaciers in the region near Blackfoot and Jackson Glaciers covered 5,337 acres (21.6 km<sup>2</sup>), but by 1979, the same region of the park had glacier ice covering only 1,828 acres (7.4 km<sup>2</sup>). Between 1850 and 1979, 73% of the glacial ice had melted away. At the time the park was created, Jackson Glacier was part of Blackfoot Glacier, but the two have separated into individual glaciers since.
It is unknown how glacial retreat may affect the park's ecosystems beyond the broad concept of creating new problems over time, and intensifying or exacerbating existing challenges. There is concern over negative impacts, such as the loss of habitat for plant and animal species that are dependent on cold water. Less glacial melt reduces stream level flow during the dry summer and fall seasons, and lowers water table levels overall, increasing the risk of forest fires. The loss of glaciers will also reduce the aesthetic appeal that glaciers provide to visitors. Relative to the unpredictability of emerging science, misinformation began to circulate in the news media and on social media in early to mid-2019, claiming that the Park Service had discreetly removed or changed placards, movies, brochures, and other literature warning that the park's glaciers would be gone by 2020. Apparently, the event was triggered when the Park Service began updating their on-site placards to reflect the latest scientific findings. The "gone by 2020" date on one placard was replaced with, "When they will completely disappear, however, depends on how and when we act.” Another placard states, "Some glaciers melt faster than others, but one thing is consistent: the glaciers in the park are shrinking.”
### Climate
As the park spans the Continental Divide, and has more than 7,000 ft (2,100 m) in elevation variance, many climates and microclimates are found in the park. As with other alpine systems, average temperature usually drops as elevation increases. The western side of the park, in the Pacific watershed, has a milder and wetter climate, due to its lower elevation. Precipitation is greatest during the winter and spring, averaging 2 to 3 in (50 to 80 mm) per month. Snowfall can occur at any time of the year, even in the summer, and especially at higher altitudes. The winter can bring prolonged cold waves, especially on the eastern side of the Continental Divide, which has a higher elevation overall. Snowfalls are significant over the course of the winter, with the largest accumulation occurring in the west. During the tourist season, daytime high temperatures average 60 to 70 °F (16 to 21 °C), and nighttime lows usually drop into the 40 °F (4 °C) range. Temperatures in the high country may be much cooler. In the lower western valleys, daytime highs in the summer may reach 90 °F (30 °C).
Rapid temperature changes have been noted in the region. In Browning, Montana, just east of the park in the Blackfeet Reservation, a world record temperature drop of 100 °F (56 °C) in only 24 hours occurred on the night of January 23–24, 1916, when thermometers plunged from 44 to −56 °F (7 to −49 °C).
Glacier National Park has a highly regarded global climate change research program. Based in West Glacier, with the main headquarters in Bozeman, Montana, the U.S. Geological Survey has performed scientific research on specific climate change studies since 1992. In addition to the study of the retreating glaciers, research performed includes forest modeling studies in which fire ecology and habitat alterations are analyzed. Additionally, changes in alpine vegetation patterns are documented, watershed studies in which stream flow rates and temperatures are recorded frequently at fixed gauging stations, and atmospheric research in which UV-B radiation, ozone, and other atmospheric gases are analyzed over time. The research compiled contributes to a broader understanding of climate changes in the park. The data collected, when compared to other facilities scattered around the world, help to correlate these climatic changes on a global scale.
Glacier is considered to have excellent air and water quality. No major areas of dense human population exist anywhere near the region and industrial effects are minimized due to a scarcity of factories and other potential contributors of pollutants. However, the sterile and cold lakes found throughout the park are easily contaminated by airborne pollutants that fall whenever it rains or snows, and some evidence of these pollutants has been found in park waters. Wildfires could also impact the quality of water. However, the pollution level is currently viewed as negligible, and the park lakes and waterways have a water quality rating of A-1, the highest rating given by the state of Montana.
## Wildlife and ecology
### Flora
Glacier is part of a large preserved ecosystem collectively known as the "Crown of the Continent Ecosystem", all of which is a primarily untouched wilderness of a pristine quality. Virtually all the plants and animals which existed at the time European explorers first entered the region are present in the park today.
A total of over 1,132 plant species have been identified parkwide. The predominantly coniferous forest is home to various species of trees such as the Engelmann spruce, Douglas fir, subalpine fir, limber pine and western larch, which is a deciduous conifer, producing cones but losing its needles each fall. Cottonwood and aspen are the more common deciduous trees and are found at lower elevations, usually along lakes and streams. The timberline on the eastern side of the park is almost 800 ft (244 m) lower than on the western side of the Continental Divide, due to exposure to the colder winds and weather of the Great Plains. West of the Continental Divide, the forest receives more moisture and is more protected from the winter, resulting in a more densely populated forest with taller trees. Above the forested valleys and mountain slopes, alpine tundra conditions prevail, with grasses and small plants eking out an existence in a region that enjoys as little as three months without snow cover. Thirty species of plants are found only in the park and surrounding national forests. Beargrass, a tall flowering plant, is commonly found near moisture sources, and is relatively widespread during July and August. Wildflowers such as monkeyflower, glacier lily, fireweed, balsamroot and Indian paintbrush are also common.
The forested sections fall into three major climatic zones. The west and northwest are dominated by spruce and fir and the southwest by red cedar and hemlock; the areas east of the Continental Divide are a combination of mixed pine, spruce, fir and prairie zones. The cedar-hemlock groves along the Lake McDonald valley are the easternmost examples of this Pacific climatic ecosystem.
Whitebark pine communities have been heavily damaged due to the effects of blister rust, a non native fungus. In Glacier and the surrounding region, 30% of the whitebark pine trees have died and over 70% of the remaining trees are currently infected. The whitebark pine provides a high fat pine cone seed, commonly known as the pine nut, that is a favorite food of red squirrels and Clark's nutcracker. Both grizzlies and black bears are known to raid squirrel caches of pine nuts, one of the bears' favorite foods. Between 1930 and 1970, efforts to control the spread of blister rust were unsuccessful, and continued destruction of whitebark pines appears likely, with attendant negative impacts on dependent species.
### Fauna
Virtually all the historically known plant and animal species, with the exception of the bison and woodland caribou, are still present, providing biologists with an intact ecosystem for plant and animal research. Two threatened species of mammals, the grizzly bear and the lynx, are found in the park. Although their numbers remain at historical levels, both are listed as threatened because in nearly every other region of the U.S. outside of Alaska, they are either extremely rare or absent from their historical range. On average, one or two bear attacks on humans occur each year. There have been 11 bear-related deaths since 1971, and 20 non-fatal injuries since 2001. The exact number of grizzlies and lynx in the park is unknown; however, the first ever scientific survey of the lynx population in the park was completed in 2021. The collected data will help researchers determine the number of individual lynx that populate certain areas of the park. Reports from state and federal resource agencies, such as the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, indicate that as of 2021, the grizzly population throughout the millions of acres in and around Glacier Park has climbed to around 1,051–more than triple the 300 or so population estimates in 1975 when grizzlies were first listed as a threatened species. While exact population numbers for grizzlies and the smaller black bear are still unknown, biologists have implemented a variety of methods in their efforts to achieve more accuracy in determining population range. Another study has indicated that the wolverine, another very rare mammal in the lower 48 states, also lives in the park. Other mammals such as the mountain goat (the official park symbol), bighorn sheep, moose, elk, mule deer, skunk, white-tailed deer, bobcat, coyote, and cougar are either plentiful or common. Unlike in Yellowstone National Park, which implemented a wolf reintroduction program in the 1990s, it is believed that wolves recolonized Glacier National Park naturally during the 1980s. Sixty-two species of mammals have been documented including badger, river otter, porcupine, mink, marten, fisher, two species of marmots, six species of bats, and numerous other small mammals.
Over 260 species of birds have been recorded, with raptors such as the bald eagle, golden eagle, peregrine falcon, osprey and several species of hawks residing year round. The harlequin duck is a colorful species of waterfowl found in the lakes and waterways. The great blue heron, tundra swan, Canada goose and American wigeon are species of waterfowl more commonly encountered in the park. Great horned owl, Clark's nutcracker, Steller's jay, pileated woodpecker and cedar waxwing reside in the dense forests along the mountainsides, and in the higher altitudes, the ptarmigan, timberline sparrow and rosy finch are the most likely to be seen. The Clark's nutcracker is less plentiful than in past years due to the decline in the number of whitebark pines.
Because of the colder climate, ectothermic reptiles are all but absent, with two species of garter snake and the western painted turtle being the only three reptile species proven to exist. Similarly, only six species of amphibians are documented, although those species exist in large numbers. After a forest fire in 2001, a few park roads were temporarily closed the following year to allow thousands of western toads to migrate to other areas.
A total of 23 species of fish reside in park waters, and native game fish species found in the lakes and streams include the westslope cutthroat trout, northern pike, mountain whitefish, kokanee salmon and Arctic grayling. Glacier is also home to the threatened bull trout, which is illegal to possess and must be returned to the water if caught inadvertently. Introduction in previous decades of lake trout and other non-native fish species has greatly impacted some native fish populations, especially the bull trout and west slope cutthroat trout.
### Fire ecology
Forest fires were viewed for many decades as a threat to protected areas such as forests and parks. As a better understanding of fire ecology developed after the 1960s, forest fires were understood to be a natural part of the ecosystem. The earlier policies of suppression resulted in the accumulation of dead and decaying trees and plants, which would normally have been reduced had fires been allowed to burn. Many species of plants and animals actually need wildfires to help replenish the soil with nutrients and to open up areas that allow grasses and smaller plants to thrive. Glacier National Park has a fire management plan which ensures that human-caused fires are generally suppressed. In the case of natural fires, the fire is monitored and suppression is dependent on the size and threat the fire may pose to human safety and structures.
Increased population and the growth of suburban areas near parklands, has led to the development of what is known as Wildland Urban Interface Fire Management, in which the park cooperates with adjacent property owners in improving safety and fire awareness. This approach is common to many other protected areas. As part of this program, houses and structures near the park are designed to be more fire resistant. Dead and fallen trees are removed from near places of human habitation, reducing the available fuel load and the risk of a catastrophic fire, and advance warning systems are developed to help alert property owners and visitors about forest fire potentials during a given period of the year. Glacier National Park has an average of 14 fires with 5,000 acres (20 km<sup>2</sup>) burnt each year. In 2003, 136,000 acres (550 km<sup>2</sup>) burned in the park after a five-year drought and a summer season of almost no precipitation. This was the most area transformed by fire since the creation of the park in 1910.
## Recreation
Glacier is distant from major cities. The closest airport is in Kalispell, Montana, southwest of the park. Amtrak’s Empire Builder stops seasonally at East Glacier, and year-round at West Glacier and Essex. A fleet of restored 1930s White Motor Company coaches, called Red Jammers, offer tours on all the main roads in the park. The drivers of the buses are called "Jammers", due to the gear-jamming that formerly occurred during the vehicles' operation. The tour buses were rebuilt in 2001 by Ford Motor Company. The bodies were removed from their original chassis and built on modern Ford E-Series van chassis. They were also converted to run on propane to lessen their environmental impact. Later, new hybrid engines were adopted. As of 2017, 33 of original 35 are still in operation.
Historic wooden tour boats, some dating back to the 1920s, operate on some of the larger lakes. Several of these boats have been in continuous seasonal operation at Glacier National Park since 1927 and carry up to 80 passengers. Three of these decades-old boats were added to the National Register of Historic Places in January 2018.
Hiking is popular in the park. Over half of the visitors to the park report taking a hike on the park's nearly 700 mi (1,127 km) of trails. 110 mi (177 km) of the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail spans most of the distance of the park north to south, with a few alternative routes at lower elevations if high altitude passes are closed due to snow. The Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail crosses the park on 52 mi (84 km) from east to west.
Dogs are not permitted on any trails in the park due to the presence of bears and other large mammals. Dogs are permitted at front country campsites that can be accessed by a vehicle and along paved roads.
Many day hikes can be taken in the park. Back-country camping is allowed at campsites along the trails. A permit is required and can be obtained from certain visitor centers or arranged for in advance. Much of Glacier's backcountry is usually inaccessible to hikers until early June due to accumulated snowpack and avalanche risk, and many trails at higher altitudes remain snow-packed until July. Campgrounds that allow vehicle access are found throughout the park, most of which are near one of the larger lakes. The campgrounds at St. Mary and at Apgar are open year-round, but conditions are primitive in the off-season, as the restroom facilities are closed and there is no running water. All campgrounds with vehicle access are usually open from mid-June until mid-September. Guide and shuttle services are also available.
The park attracts many climbers though the rock quality is old and loose in the Lewis Overthrust fault structure. The seminal literature on climbing in the park, A Climber's Guide to Glacier National Park, was written by J. Gordon Edwards in 1961, with the latest edition published in 1995. The Glacier Mountaineering Society sponsors climbing in the park, issuing awards to those climbers who summit all 10,000 ft (3,000 m) peaks or all five technical peaks.
The park is a popular destination for kayaking and fly fishing. A permit is not required to fish in park waters. The threatened bull trout must be released immediately back to the water if caught; otherwise, the regulations on limits of catch per day are liberal.
Winter recreation in Glacier is limited. Snowmobiling is illegal throughout the park. Cross-country skiing is permitted in the lower altitude valleys away from avalanche zones.
|
32,926,065 |
Norman Cob
| 1,170,459,452 |
Breed of light draught horse from Normandy
|
[
"Horse breeds originating in France"
] |
The Norman Cob or Cob Normand is a breed of light draught horse that originated in the region of Normandy in northern France. It is of medium size, with a range of heights and weights, due to selective breeding for a wide range of uses. Its conformation is similar to a robust Thoroughbred, and it more closely resembles a Thoroughbred cross than other French draught breeds. The breed is known for its lively, long-striding trot. Common colours include chestnut, bay and seal brown. There are three general subsets within the breed: horses used under saddle, those used in harness, and those destined for meat production. It is popular for recreational and competitive driving, representing France internationally in the latter, and is also used for several riding disciplines.
The Normandy region of France is well known for its horse breeding, having also produced the Percheron and French Trotter. Small horses called bidets were the original horses in the area, and these, crossed with other types, eventually produced the Carrossier Normand, the immediate ancestor of the Norman Cob. Although known as one of the best carriage horse breeds available in the early 20th century, the Carrossier Normand became extinct after the advent of the automobile, having been used to develop the French Trotter, Anglo-Norman and Norman Cob. In its homeland, the Norman Cob was used widely for agriculture, even more so than the internationally known Percheron, and in 1950, the first studbook was created for the breed.
The advent of mechanisation threatened all French draught breeds, and while many draught breeders turned their production towards the meat market, Norman Cob breeders instead crossed their horses with Thoroughbreds to contribute to the fledgling Selle Français breed, now the national saddle horse of France. This allowed the Norman Cob to remain relatively the same through the decades, while other draught breeds were growing heavier and slower due to selection for meat. Between the 1970s and 1990s, the studbook went through several changes, and in the 1980s, genetic studies were performed that showed the breed suffered from inbreeding and genetic drift. Breed enthusiasts worked to develop new selection criteria for breeding stock, and population numbers are now relatively stable. Today, Norman Cobs are mainly found in the departments of Manche, Calvados and Orne.
## Characteristics
The Norman Cob is a mid-sized horse, standing between 160 and 165 centimetres (15.3 and 16.1 hands) and weighing 550 to 900 kilograms (1200 to 2000 lb). The large variations in height and weight are explained by selection for a variety of uses within the breed. The Norman Cob is elegant and closer in type to a Thoroughbred-cross than other French draught breeds. Its conformation is similar to a robust Thoroughbred, with a square overall profile and short back. Selective breeding has been used to develop a lively trot, with long strides.
The head is well-proportioned and similar to that of the Selle Français, with wide nostrils, small ears and a straight or convex facial profile. The neck is thick, muscular and arched. The mane is sometimes hogged. The shoulders are broad and angled, the chest deep and the withers pronounced. The body is compact and stocky, with a short, strong back. The hindquarters are powerful, although not so much as in heavy draught breeds, and the croup muscular and sloping. The legs are short, muscular and strong, with thick bone, but less massive than most draught breeds. The feet are round, wide and solid.
Colours accepted for registration include chestnut, bay and seal brown (the latter called black pangaré by the breed registry, although these horses are genetically brown, not black with pangaré markings). Bays with white markings are the most popular. The Norman Cob is a calm, willing horse with strong personality. Its Thoroughbred ancestry gives them energy and athleticism, and makes them mature faster than other draught breeds. They show great endurance when ridden, and are relatively hardy, accepting outdoor living and changes in climate. Traditionally the Norman Cob had its tail docked, a practice that continued until January 1996, when the practice became illegal in France.
There are three general subsets within the breed: horses used under saddle, those used in harness, and those destined for meat production. Horses may be automatically registered if at least 87.5 per cent of their ancestors (seven out of eight) were registered Norman Cobs. Purebred stallions may not be bred more than 70 times per year. Foals produced through artificial insemination and embryo transfer may be registered, but cloned horses may not. In general, breeders look to produce horses with good gaits and an aptitude for driving, while keeping the conformation that makes the Norman Cob one of nine French draught breeds.
## History
The Norman Cob comes from the Normandy region of France, an area known for its horse breeding. Normandy is also the home of two other breeds, the Percheron and the French Trotter. Both of these breeds are better-known than the Norman Cob, although the latter is popular in its home region. The name "cob" comes from the English and Welsh cobs that it resembles, with the addition of "Norman" to refer to the area in which it originated. Although generally considered a member of the draught horse group, the Norman Cob is special among French draught breeds. It has been used almost exclusively for the production of sport horses, and has not been extensively used for the production of meat, unlike many other French draught breeds. This means that its conformation has remained relatively unchanged, as opposed to being bred for heavier weights for butchering.
The original horses in Normandy and Brittany were small horses called bidets, introduced by the Celts. The Romans crossed these horses with larger mares, and beginning in the 10th century, these "Norman horses" were desired throughout Europe. During the 16th century, Norman horses were known to be heavy and strong, able to pull long distances, and used to pull artillery and diligences. Barb and Arabian blood was added during the reign of Louis XIV. The Norman Cob is descended from this Norman horse, called the Carrossier Normand. It was also influenced by crossing with other breeds including the Mecklenburger, the Gelderland horse and Danish horses. By 1840, the Carrossier Normand had become more refined, due to crosses with imported British Norfolk Trotters, as well as gaining better gaits, energy, elegance, and conformation.
The Haras National de Saint-Lô (National Stud of Saint-Lô) was founded in 1806 by Napoleon. This stud and the Haras du Pin (Stud of Pin) became the main production centres for the Carrossier Normand. The Norman horse-Thoroughbred crossbreds produced at these studs were divided into two groups. The first were lighter cavalry horses, and the second were heavier horses, called "cobs", used for draught work in the region. At this time, there was no breed registry or studbook; instead, selective breeding was practised by the two studs, and farmers tested the capabilities of young horses to select breeding stock.
### Early 20th century
At the very beginning of the 20th century, the Carrossier Normand was considered the best carriage horses available. The arrival of automobiles, and corresponding decline in demand for carriage horses, coincided with a split in the breed. A distinction was made between the lighter, faster horses in the breed, used for sport, and larger horses, used for agricultural work. The lighter horses eventually became the French Trotter (for driving) and Anglo-Norman (for riding and cavalry), while the heavier horses became the Norman Cob. In 1912, when French horse populations were at their highest, there were 422 stallions at the Saint-Lô stud, mainly cobs and trotters. When the original Carrossier Normand became extinct in the 1920s, breeding focused on the two remaining types, with the Norman Cob continuing to be used for farming and the Anglo-Norman being used to create the Selle Français, the national French sport horse.
In the regions of Saint-Lô and Cotentin, the Norman Cob was widespread in agricultural uses until 1950, and the population continued to increase in the first half of the 20th century, even through the occupation during World War II. Even the Percheron, which was internationally recognised as the Norman draught horse, was not as popular in the homeland of the Norman Cob breed. In 1945, Norman Cob stallions accounted for 40% of the conscripted horses, and in 1950 a studbook was created for the breed.
Like all French draught breeds, the Norman Cob was threatened by the advent of mechanisation in farming. The only option left to many breeders was to redirect their production to the meat markets. However, the Norman Cob avoided this, through the efforts of Laurens St. Martin, the head of the Saint-Lô stud in 1944 and the developer of the Selle Français. He began crossing Thoroughbred stallions with Norman Cob mares to produce Selle Français horses, and the success of this program allowed a reorientation of the Cob breeding programs. Although population numbers continued to decline until 1995, the physical characteristics of the breed remained much the same, not growing heavier and slower as many of the French draught breeds did due to breeding for the production of meat. Even today, some Selle Français from Norman bloodlines are similar to the Norman Cob in appearance.
### 1950 to 2000
The modern Norman Cob is slightly heavier than it was in the early 20th century, due to lighter horses of the breed being absorbed into the Selle Français breed. In 1976, the National Stud at Saint-Lô had 186 stallions, including 60 Norman Cobs. In the same year, the breed registry was reorganised, and the Norman Cob placed in the draught horse category. The reorganisation of the breed registry helped to reinvigorate Norman Cob breeding, and to bring attention to the risk of extinction of the breed. In 1980, the Institut national de la recherche agronomique and Institut national agronomique performed demographic and genetic analysis of threatened breeds of horses within France. In 1982, researchers concluded that the Norman Cob has been inbred and suffered genetic drift from its original population. The increasing average age of Norman Cob breeders also made the situation of the breed precarious.
Enthusiasts worked to reorient the breed towards driving and recreation pursuits, and since 1982 have again reorganised the breed association. In 1992, a new studbook was created for the breed, with new selection criteria designed to preserve the quality of the breed, particularly its gaits. The latest editions of the breed registry and studbook are controlled by the Syndicat national des éleveurs et utilisateurs de chevaux Cob normand (National Union of Farmers and Users of Normandy Cob Horses), based in Tessy-sur-Vire. The association works to preserve and promote the breed throughout France, focusing especially on Normandy, Vendée and Anjou. In 1994, Normandy contained 2000 Percheron and Norman Cob horses, and annually bred around 600 foals of these two breeds. This included approximately half of the Norman Cobs bred in France.
### 2000 to today
Today, Norman Cobs are mainly found in the departments of Manche, Calvados and Orne, which form the area where the breed was originally developed. The region of Saint-Lô, which ranks first in the production of Norman Cobs, represents 35 per cent of new births. The Norman Cob is also present around the Haras de la Vendée (Stud at Vendée), which represents 25 per cent of births, the Haras du Pin and in central Massif. In 2004, there were just over 600 French breeders of the Norman Cob, and in 2005, 914 Norman Cob mares were bred, with 65 stallions recorded as active in France. In recent years, the number of Norman Cobs has remained relatively stable. In 2011, there were 319 Norman Cob births in France, and numbers of annual births between 1992 and 2010 ranged between 385 and 585.
Members of the breed are shown annually at the Paris International Agricultural Show. There are fairs held for the breed at Lessay and Gavray, in Manche. The National Stud at Saint-Lô remains involved in the maintenance and development of the breed, and organises the annual national competition for the breed. The stud also organises events at which to present the breed to the public, including the Normandy Horse Show. The Norman Cob is beginning to be exported to other countries, especially Belgium. In that country, some are bred pure, while others are crossed on the Ardennes to improve its gaits. Approximately 15 horses are exported annually, travelling to Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy for leisure, logging and agricultural uses.
## Uses
A multi-purpose breed, the Norman Cob was formerly used wherever there was a need. It was used in a variety of agricultural and other work by farmers, and was used by the army for pulling artillery. The postal service used it to pull mail carriages, which it was capable of doing at a fast trot over bad roads for long distances. Postal workers appreciated the breed for its willingness to remain calm, stationary and tethered for long periods of time. Due to the modernisation of agriculture and transport, it is now used very little in these areas.
The breed is popular for recreational and competitive driving, to which it is well suited in temperament. In 1997, the rules of driving events in France were modified to take into account the speed of execution of the course, which made lighter, faster horses more competitive. The Norman Cob and the lighter type of Boulonnais were particularly affected. Its gaits, calm temperament and willingness to master technical movements make it an excellent competitor, and in 2011, more than a third of the horses represented in the French driving championships were Norman Cobs. Many Norman Cobs represent France in driving events at international level.
The Norman Cob is also used for riding, and may be used for most equestrian disciplines. It is particularly well suited for vaulting. Elderly and nervous riders often appreciate its calm temperament. Lighter Cobs can be used for mounted hunts. Crosses between the Norman Cob and Thoroughbred continue to be made to create saddle horses, generally with 25 to 50 per cent Cob blood. Some Norman Cobs are bred for the meat market. The breed is sometimes preferred by butchers because of the lighter carcass weight and increased profitability over the Thoroughbred, while at the same time retaining meat similar in flavour and appearance to that of the Thoroughbred.
|
393,255 |
Mourning dove
| 1,168,034,152 |
North American bird in the family Columbidae
|
[
"Articles containing video clips",
"Birds described in 1758",
"Birds of Haiti",
"Birds of Mexico",
"Birds of North America",
"Birds of the Caribbean",
"Birds of the Dominican Republic",
"Birds of the United States",
"Extant Pleistocene first appearances",
"Game birds",
"Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus",
"Zenaida"
] |
The mourning dove (Zenaida macroura) is a member of the dove family, Columbidae. The bird is also known as the American mourning dove, the rain dove, colloquially as the turtle dove, and it was once known as the Carolina pigeon and Carolina turtledove. It is one of the most abundant and widespread of all North American birds and a popular gamebird, with more than 20 million birds (up to 70 million in some years) shot annually in the U.S., both for sport and meat. Its ability to sustain its population under such pressure is due to its prolific breeding; in warm areas, one pair may raise up to six broods of two young each in a single year. The wings make an unusual whistling sound upon take-off and landing, a form of sonation. The bird is a strong flier, capable of speeds up to 88 km/h (55 mph).
Mourning doves are light gray and brown and generally muted in color. Males and females are similar in appearance. The species is generally monogamous, with two squabs (young) per brood. Both parents incubate and care for the young. Mourning doves eat almost exclusively seeds, but the young are fed crop milk by their parents.
## Taxonomy
In 1731, the English naturalist Mark Catesby described and illustrated the passenger pigeon and the mourning dove on successive pages of his The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. For the passenger pigeon he used the common name "Pigeon of passage" and the scientific Latin Palumbus migratorius; for the mourning dove he used "Turtle of Carolina" and Turtur carolinensis. In 1743 the naturalist George Edwards included the mourning dove with the English name "long-tail'd dove" and the Latin name Columba macroura in his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds. Edwards's pictures of the male and female doves were drawn from live birds that had been shipped to England from the West Indies. When in 1758 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the tenth edition, he conflated the two species. He used the Latin name Columba macroura introduced by Edwards as the binomial name but included a description mainly based on Catesby. He cited Edwards's description of the mourning dove and Catesby's description of the passenger pigeon. Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae again in 1766 for the twelfth edition. He dropped Columba macroura and instead coined Columba migratoria for the passenger pigeon, Columba cariolensis for the mourning dove and Columba marginata for Edwards's mourning dove.
To resolve the confusion over the binomial names of the two species, Francis Hemming proposed in 1952 that the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) secure the specific name macroura for the mourning dove and migratorius for the passenger pigeon, since this was the intended use by the authors on whose work Linnaeus had based his description. This was accepted by the ICZN, which used its plenary powers to designate the species for the respective names in 1955.
The mourning dove is now placed in the genus Zenaida, introduced in 1838 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte, commemorating his wife Zénaïde. The specific epithet is from the Ancient Greek makros meaning "long" and -ouros meaning "-tailed".
The mourning dove is closely related to the eared dove (Zenaida auriculata) and the Socorro dove (Zenaida graysoni). Some authorities consider them a superspecies, and the three birds are sometimes classified in the separate genus Zenaidura, but the current classification has them as separate species in the genus Zenaida. In addition, the Socorro dove has at times been considered conspecific with the mourning dove, though several differences in behavior, call, and appearance justify separation as two different species. While the three species do form a subgroup of Zenaida, using a separate genus would interfere with the monophyly of Zenaida by making it paraphyletic.
There are five subspecies:
- Zenaida macroura marginella (Woodhouse, 1852) – west Canada and west USA to south central Mexico
- Zenaida macroura carolinensis (Linnaeus, 1766) – east Canada and east USA, Bermuda, Bahama Islands
- Zenaida macroura macroura (Linnaeus, 1758) – (nominate subspecies) Cuba, Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti), Puerto Rico, Jamaica
- Zenaida macroura clarionensis (Townsend, CH, 1890) – Clarion Island (off west Mexico)
- Zenaida macroura turturilla (Wetmore, 1956) – Costa Rica, west Panama
The ranges of most of the subspecies overlap a little, with three in the United States or Canada. The West Indian subspecies is found throughout the Greater Antilles. It has recently invaded the Florida Keys. The eastern subspecies is found mainly in eastern North America, as well as Bermuda and the Bahamas. The western subspecies are found in western North America, including parts of Mexico. The Panamanian subspecies is in Central America. The Clarion Island subspecies is found only on Clarion Island, off Mexico's Pacific coast.
The mourning dove is sometimes called the "American mourning dove" to distinguish it from the distantly related mourning collared dove (Streptopelia decipiens) of Africa. It was also formerly known as the "Carolina turtledove" and the "Carolina pigeon". The "mourning" part of its common name comes from its doleful call.
The mourning dove was thought to be the passenger pigeon's closest living relative on morphological grounds until genetic analysis showed Patagioenas pigeons are more closely related. The mourning dove was even suggested to belong to the same genus, Ectopistes, and was listed by some authors as E. carolinensis. The passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was hunted to extinction in the early 1900s.
## Description
The mourning dove is a medium-sized, slender dove approximately 31 cm (12 in) in length. Mourning doves weigh 112–170 g (4.0–6.0 oz), usually closer to 128 g (4.5 oz). The mourning dove has a wingspan of 37–45 cm. The elliptical wings are broad, and the head is rounded. Its tail is long and tapered ("macroura" comes from the Greek words for "large" and "tail"). Mourning doves have perching feet, with three toes forward and one reversed. The legs are short and reddish colored. The beak is short and dark, usually a brown-black hue.
The plumage is generally light gray-brown and lighter and pinkish below. The wings have black spotting, and the outer tail feathers are white, contrasting with the black inners. Below the eye is a distinctive crescent-shaped area of dark feathers. The eyes are dark, with light blue skin surrounding them. The adult male has bright purple-pink patches on the neck sides, with light pink coloring reaching the breast. The crown of the adult male is a distinctly bluish-grey color. Females are similar in appearance, but with more brown coloring overall and a little smaller than the male. The iridescent feather patches on the neck above the shoulders are nearly absent but can be quite vivid on males. Juvenile birds have a scaly appearance and are generally darker.
Feather colors are generally believed to be relatively static, changing only by small amounts over periods of months. However, a 2011 study argued that since feathers have neither nerves or blood vessels, color changes must be caused by external stimuli. Researchers analyzed how feathers of iridescent mourning doves responded to stimulus changes of adding and evaporating water. As a result, it was discovered that iridescent feather color changed hue, became more chromatic, and increased overall reflectance by almost 50%. Transmission electron microscopy and thin-film models revealed that color is produced by thin-film interference from a single layer of keratin around the edge of feather barbules, under which lies a layer of air and melanosomes. Once the environmental conditions were changed, the most striking morphological difference was a twisting of colored barbules that exposed more of their surface area for reflection, which explains the observed increase in brightness. Overall, the researchers suggest that some plumage colors may be more changeable than previously thought possible.
All five subspecies of the mourning dove look similar and are not easily distinguishable. The nominate subspecies possesses shorter wings and are darker and more buff-colored than the "average" mourning dove. Z. m. carolinensis has longer wings and toes, a shorter beak, and is darker in color. The western subspecies has longer wings, a longer beak, shorter toes, and is more muted and lighter in color. The Panama mourning dove has shorter wings and legs, a longer beak, and is grayer in color. The Clarion Island subspecies possesses larger feet, a larger beak, and is darker brown in color.
### Vocalization
This species' call is a distinctive, plaintive cooOOoo-wooo-woo-woooo, uttered by males to attract females, and it may be mistaken for the call of an owl at first. (Close up, a grating or throat-rattling sound may be heard preceding the first coo.) Other sounds include a nested call (cooOOoo) by paired males to attract their female mates to the nest sites, a greeting call (a soft ork) by males upon rejoining their mates, and an alarm call (a short roo-oo) by either a male or female when threatened. In flight, the wings make a fluttery whistling sound that is hard to hear. The wing whistle is much louder and more noticeable upon take-off and landing.
## Distribution and habitat
The mourning dove has a large range of nearly 11,000,000 km<sup>2</sup> (4,200,000 sq mi). The species is resident throughout the Greater Antilles, most of Mexico, the Continental United States, southern Canada, and the Atlantic archipelago of Bermuda. Much of the Canadian prairie sees these birds in summer only, and southern Central America sees them in winter only. The species is a vagrant in northern Canada, Alaska, and South America. It has been spotted as an accidental at least seven times in the Western Palearctic with records from the British Isles (5), the Azores (1) and Iceland (1). In 1963, the mourning dove was introduced to Hawaii, and in 1998 there was still a small population in North Kona. The mourning dove also appeared on Socorro Island, off the western coast of Mexico, in 1988, sixteen years after the Socorro dove was extirpated from that island.
The mourning dove occupies a wide variety of open and semi-open habitats, such as urban areas, farms, prairie, grassland, and lightly wooded areas. It avoids swamps and thick forest.
### Migration
Most mourning doves migrate along flyways over land. Birds in Canada migrate the farthest, probably wintering in Mexico or further south. Those that spend the summer further south are more sedentary, with much shorter migrations. At the southern part of their range, Mourning Doves are present year-round.
Spring migration north runs from March to May. Fall migration south runs from September to November, with immatures moving first, followed by adult females and then by adult males. Migration is usually during the day, in flocks, and at low altitudes.
## Behaviour and ecology
Mourning doves sunbathe or rain bathe by lying on the ground or a flat tree limb, leaning over, stretching one wing, and keeping this posture for up to twenty minutes. These birds can also water bathe in shallow pools or birdbaths. Dustbathing is common as well.
Outside the breeding season, mourning doves roost communally in dense deciduous trees or conifers. During sleep, the head rests between the shoulders, close to the body; it is not tucked under the shoulder feathers as in many other species. During the winter in Canada, roosting flights to the roosts in the evening, and out of the roosts in the morning, are delayed on colder days.
### Breeding
Courtship begins with a noisy flight by the male, followed by a graceful, circular glide with outstretched wings and head down. After landing, the male will approach the female with a puffed-out breast, bobbing head, and loud calls. Mated pairs will often preen each other's feathers.
The male then leads the female to potential nest sites, and the female will choose one. The female dove builds the nest. The male will fly about, gather material, and bring it to her. The male will stand on the female's back and give the material to the female, who then builds it into the nest. The nest is constructed of twigs, conifer needles, or grass blades, and is of flimsy construction. Mourning doves will sometimes requisition the unused nests of other mourning doves, other birds, or arboreal mammals such as squirrels.
Most nests are in trees, both deciduous and coniferous. Sometimes, they can be found in shrubs, vines, or on artificial constructs like buildings, or hanging flower pots. When there is no suitable elevated object, mourning doves will nest on the ground.
The clutch size is almost always two eggs. Occasionally, however, a female will lay her eggs in the nest of another pair, leading to three or four eggs in the nest. The eggs are white, 6.6 ml (0.23 imp fl oz; 0.22 US fl oz), 2.57–2.96 cm (1.01–1.17 in) long, 2.06–2.30 cm (0.81–0.91 in) wide, 6–7 g (0.21–0.25 oz) at laying (5–6% of female body mass). Both sexes incubate, the male from morning to afternoon, and the female the rest of the day and at night. Mourning doves are devoted parents; nests are very rarely left unattended by the adults.
Incubation takes two weeks. The hatched young, called squabs, are strongly altricial, being helpless at hatching and covered with down. Both parents feed the squabs pigeon's milk (dove's milk) for the first 3–4 days of life. Thereafter, the crop milk is gradually augmented by seeds. Fledging takes place in about 11–15 days, before the squabs are fully grown but after they are capable of digesting adult food. They stay nearby to be fed by their father for up to two weeks after fledging.
Mourning doves are prolific breeders. In warmer areas, these birds may raise to six broods in a season. This fast breeding is essential because mortality is high. Each year, mortality can reach 58% a year for adults and 69% for the young.
The mourning dove is generally monogamous and forms strong pair bonds.
### Feeding
Mourning doves eat almost exclusively seeds, which make up more than 99% of their diet. Rarely, they will eat snails or insects. Mourning doves generally eat enough to fill their crops and then fly away to digest while resting. They often swallow grit such as fine gravel or sand to assist with digestion. The species usually forages on the ground, walking but not hopping. At bird feeders, mourning doves are attracted to one of the largest ranges of seed types of any North American bird, with a preference for rapeseed, corn, millet, safflower, and sunflower seeds. Mourning doves do not dig or scratch for seeds, though they will push aside ground litter; instead, they eat what is readily visible. They will sometimes perch on plants and eat from there.
Mourning doves show a preference for the seeds of certain species of plant over others. Foods taken in preference to others include pine nuts, sweetgum seeds, and the seeds of pokeberry, amaranth, canary grass, corn, sesame, and wheat. When their favorite foods are absent, mourning doves will eat the seeds of other plants, including buckwheat, rye, goosegrass and smartweed.
### Predators and parasites
The primary predators of this species are diurnal birds of prey, such as falcons and hawks. During nesting, corvids, grackles, housecats, or rat snakes will prey on their eggs. Cowbirds rarely parasitize mourning dove nests. Mourning doves reject slightly under a third of cowbird eggs in such nests, and the mourning dove's vegetarian diet is unsuitable for cowbirds.
Mourning doves can be afflicted with several different parasites and diseases, including tapeworms, nematodes, mites, and lice. The mouth-dwelling parasite Trichomonas gallinae is particularly severe. While a mourning dove will sometimes host it without symptoms, it will often cause yellowish growth in the mouth and esophagus that will eventually starve the host to death. Avian pox is a common, insect-vectored disease.
## Conservation status
The number of individual mourning doves was estimated to be approximately 475 million in 1994, and to have shown a small increase since. The large population and its vast range explain why the mourning dove is considered to be of least concern, meaning that the species is not at immediate risk. As a gamebird, the mourning dove is well-managed, with more than 20 million (and up to 40–70 million) shot by hunters each year. However, more recent reporting cautions that mourning doves are in decline in the western United States, and susceptible everywhere in the country due to lead poisoning as they eat spent shot leftover in hunting fields. In some cases, the fields are specifically planted with a favored seed plant to lure them to those sites.
## In culture
A Huron/Wyandot legend tells of a maiden named Ayu'ra (probably more accurately spelled Iohara, a common Iroquois girl's name today) who used to care for the bird, who came to love her a great deal. One day, she became sick and died. As her spirit traveled across the land to the entrance to the Underworld, all the doves followed her and tried to gain entrance into the Underworld alongside her. Sky Woman, the deity who guards this door, refused them entry, eventually creating smoke to blind them and take Ayu'ra's spirit away without their knowledge. The smoke stained their feathers gray and they have been in mourning for the maiden's loss ever since. The logic behind the story is a play on words—the sound many Native Americans attributed to the bird was "howe howe," and this is also the sound the Iroquoian peoples used to chant over the dead at funerary events.
The eastern mourning dove (Z. m. carolinensis) is Wisconsin's official symbol of peace. The bird is also Michigan's state bird of peace.
The mourning dove appears as the Carolina turtle-dove on plate 286 of Audubon's Birds of America.
References to mourning doves appear frequently in Native American literature. Mourning Dove was the pen name of Christine Quintasket, one of the first published Native American women authors. Mourning dove imagery also turns up in contemporary American and Canadian poetry in the work of poets as diverse as Robert Bly, Jared Carter, Lorine Niedecker, and Charles Wright.
The mourning dove is mentioned on the Nick Cave and Warren Ellis track, "Wood Dove", for the "For the Birds: The Birdsong Project", Vol. 2.
The mourning dove is also mentioned in other musical tracks, including Ray Charles' rendition of the popular blues song "Careless Love" and "I Love You, I Love You (I Will Never Let You Go)".
## Cited texts
|
24,661,039 |
Ramaria botrytis
| 1,172,131,702 |
Species of coral fungus in the family Gomphaceae
|
[
"Edible fungi",
"Fungi described in 1797",
"Fungi found in fairy rings",
"Fungi of Asia",
"Fungi of Australia",
"Fungi of Europe",
"Fungi of North America",
"Gomphaceae",
"Snowbank fungi",
"Taxa named by Christiaan Hendrik Persoon"
] |
Ramaria botrytis, commonly known as the clustered coral, the pink-tipped coral mushroom, or the cauliflower coral, is an edible species of coral fungus in the family Gomphaceae. Its robust fruit body can grow up to 15 cm (6 in) in diameter and 20 cm (8 in) tall, and resembles some marine coral. Its dense branches, which originate from a stout, massive base, are swollen at the tips and divided into several small branchlets. The branches are initially whitish but age to buff or tan, with tips that are pink to reddish. The flesh is thick and white. The spores, yellowish in deposit, are ellipsoid, feature longitudinal striations, and measure about 13.8 by 4.7 micrometers.
The type species of the genus Ramaria, R. botrytis was first described scientifically in 1797 by mycologist Christiaan Hendrik Persoon. A widely distributed species, it is found in North America, North Africa, central and eastern Europe, Australia, and Asia. The fungus is mycorrhizal with broadleaf trees, and fruits on the ground in wooded areas. There are several species of coral fungi that are superficially similar in appearance to R. botrytis, and although comparison of habitat or characteristics like color or branching morphology is often sufficient for identification, sometimes microscopy is required to definitively distinguish between them. Fruit bodies of Ramaria botrytis are edible, and young specimens have a mild, fruity taste. Some authors warn of laxative effects in susceptible individuals. The fungus contains several chemical compounds with in vitro biological activity, and fruit bodies have antimicrobial activity against several species and strains of drug-resistant bacteria that cause disease in humans.
## Taxonomy and classification
The species was first named as Clavaria botrytis in 1797 by Christian Hendrik Persoon. In 1821, Elias Magnus Fries sanctioned the genus name Clavaria, and treated Ramaria as a section of Clavaria. It was given its current name in 1918 by Adalbert Ricken. Obsolete historical synonyms include Gotthold Hahn's 1883 Corallium botrytis and Arthur Anselm Pearson's variety Clavaria botrytis var. alba, which is no longer recognized as an independent taxon. Currie Marr and Daniel Stuntz described the variety R. botrytis var. aurantiiramosa in their 1973 monograph of western Washington Ramaria; Edwin Schild and G. Ricci described variety compactospora from Italy in 1998. In 1950, E.J.H. Corner published George F. Atkinson's 1908 Clavaria holorubella as R. botrytis var. holorubella, but this taxon is now known as the independent species Ramaria holorubella.
The specific epithet botrytis is derived from the Greek word βότρυς (botrus) meaning "bunch of grapes". The species is commonly known as the "cauliflower coral", the "pink-tipped coral mushroom", or the "rosso coral". In the Cofre de Perote region of Veracruz, Mexico, R. botrytis is known by the local names escobea, meaning "broom", or pechuga, meaning "breast meat of chicken".
Ramaria botrytis was designated the type species of Ramaria in 1933 by Marinus Anton Donk. Modern molecular analysis indicates that Ramaria is a polyphyletic assemblage of species with clavarioid fruit bodies. According to the infrageneric classification scheme proposed by Marr and Stuntz, R. botrytis is included in the subgenus Ramaria, which includes species that have grooved spores, clamps present in the hyphae, and fruit bodies with a large, profusely branched cauliflower-like appearance. Phylogenetic analysis of nuclear large subunit ribosomal DNA suggests that R. botrytis is closely related to R. rubripermanens and R. rubrievanescens, and that these species form a clade that is sister (sharing a recent common ancestor) to the false truffle genus Gautieria, the most derived group within the studied taxa.
## Description
The fruit bodies produced by the fungus are 6 to 20 cm (2.4 to 7.9 in) tall and 6 to 30 cm (2.4 to 11.8 in) wide. They are fleshy cauliflower-like masses with a stout central stem that splits into a few lower primary branches before branching densely above. The stem is short and thick—between 1.5 and 6 cm (0.6 and 2.4 in) in diameter—and tapers downward. Initially white, in age both the stem and branches turn pale yellow to buff to tan. Old fruit bodies can fade to become almost white, or may be ochre due to fallen spores. The branching pattern is irregular, with the primary branches few and thick—typically 2–3 cm (0.8–1.2 in)—and the final branches slender (2–3 mm), and usually terminated with five to seven branchlets. The branchlet tips are pink to purplish-red. The flesh is solid and white, and has an odor described variously as indistinct or pleasant. A drop of Melzer's reagent applied to the stem tissue reveals a weak amyloid staining reaction that often requires more than 30 minutes to develop. This reaction can be used to help distinguish R. botrytis from other similar fungi.
Spores are produced by basidia on the outer surface of the branches. Viewed in deposit, the spores are pale yellow. Microscopically, they have fine longitudinal or oblique striations that often fuse together in a vein-like network. They range in shape from roughly cylindrical to sigmoid (curved like the letter "S"), and their dimensions are 12–16 by 4–5 μm. Basidia are four-spored (occasionally two-spored), and measure 59–82 by 8–11 μm. The sterigmata (slender projections of the basidia that attach to the spores) are 4–8 μm long. The hymenium and subhymenium (the tissue layer immediately under the hymenium) combined are about 80 μm thick. Hyphae comprising the subhymenium are interwoven, 2.5–4.5 μm in diameter, thin-walled, and clamped.
The variety R. botrytis var. aurantiiramosa is distinguished from the more common variety by the orange color of the upper branches. Variety compactospora tends to show a more pronounced wine-red, purple, or reddish color in the branch tips, and has smaller spores measuring 9.2–12.8 by 4–5.4 μm.
### Similar species
Distinctive features of Ramaria botrytis include its large size, the orange, reddish, or purplish branchlets, striate spores with dimensions averaging 13.8 by 4.7 μm, and a weak amyloid staining reaction of the stem tissue. R. rubripermanens has reddish terminal branches, a stout form, and striate spores, but may be distinguished from R. botrytis by its much shorter spores. Other species with which R. botrytis may be confused include: R. formosa, which has branches that are pinker than R. botrytis, and yellow-tipped; R. caulifloriformis, found in the Great Lakes region of the United States, whose branch tips darken with age; R. strasseri, which has yellow to brown branch tips; R. rubrievanescens, which has branches in which the pink color fades after picking or in mature fruit bodies; and R. botrytoides, which is most reliably distinguished from R. botrytis by its smooth spores. The European species R. rielii, often confused with R. botrytis and sometimes considered synonymous, can be distinguished by microscopic characteristics: R. reilii lacks the clamped hyphae of R. botrytis, its spores are longer and wider, and they have warts instead of striations. The North American species R. araiospora, though superficially similar to R. botrytis, has several distinguishing characteristics: it grows under hemlock; it has reddish to magenta branches with orange to yellowish tips; it lacks any discernible odor; it has warted, somewhat cylindrical spores averaging 9.9 by 3.7 μm; and it has non-amyloid stem tissue. Uniformly colored bright pink to reddish, R. subbotrytis has spores measuring 7–9 by 3–3.5 μm.
## Habitat and distribution
An ectomycorrhizal species, Ramaria botrytis forms mutualistic associations with broadleaf trees, particularly beech. In a study to determine the effectiveness of several edible ectomycorrhizal fungi in promoting growth and nutrient accumulation of large-fruited red mahogany (Eucalyptus pellita), R. botrytis was the best at improving root colonization and macronutrient uptake. Records of associations with conifers probably represent similar species. Fruit bodies grow on the ground singly, scattered, or in small groups among leaves in woods. They can also grow in fairy rings. Ramaria botrytis is a "snowbank fungus", meaning it commonly fruits near the edges of melting snowbanks in the spring. In Korea, it is prevalent at sites that also produce the choice edible species Tricholoma matsutake.
Ramaria botrytis is found in Africa (Tunisia), Australia, Chile, Asia (including the eastern Himalayas of India, Nepal, Japan, Korea, Pakistan, China, the Far East of Russia, and Turkey) and Europe (including the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria, and Spain). It is also present in Mexico and in Guatemala. Widely distributed in North America, it is most common in the southeast and along the Pacific Coast. The variety R. botrytis var. aurantiiramosa, limited in distribution to Lewis County, Washington, associates with Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla). Variety compactospora is known from Sardinia, Italy, where it has been found growing in sandy soil in forests comprising strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo), tree heath (Erica arborea), and holm oak (Quercus ilex).
## Uses
Ramaria botrytis is an edible species, and some rate it as choice. Its taste is "slight", or "fruity", and has been likened to sauerkraut, green peanuts (fresh harvested peanuts that have not been dehydrated), or pea pods. Older fruit bodies develop an acidic flavor. It is sold in food markets in Japan as Nedzumi-take, and harvested from the wild in Korea and Nepal. The thick base and main branches require longer cooking than the smaller branchlets. In the Garfagnana region of central Italy, the mushroom is stewed, or pickled in oil. Fruit bodies can be preserved by slicing thinly and drying. One field guide rates the edibility as "questionable", warning of the possible danger of confusing specimens with the poisonous Ramaria formosa. Other authors warn that some individuals may experience laxative effects from consuming the mushroom. Caution is advised when collecting fruit bodies near polluted areas, as the species is known to bioaccumulate toxic arsenic.
Chemical analysis shows R. botrytis to have a food energy value of 154 kilojoules per 100 grams of fresh fruit bodies, which is comparable to the 120–150 kJ range reported for commercially grown edible mushrooms. As a percentage of dry matter, the fruit bodies contain 39.0% crude protein, 1.4% lipids, 50.8% carbohydrates, and 8.8% ash. The majority of the lipid content comprises oleic (43.9%), linoleic (38.3%), and palmitic (9.9%) fatty acids.
### Chemistry
Extracts of the fruit body of Ramaria botrytis have been shown to favorably influence the growth and development of HeLa cells grown in tissue culture. The mushroom contains nicotianamine, an ACE inhibitor (angiotensin-converting enzyme). Nicotianamine is a metal-chelating compound essential in iron metabolism and utilization in plants. Several sterols have been isolated from the fruit bodies, 5α,6α-epoxy-3β-hydroxy-(22E)-ergosta-8(14),22-dien-7-one, ergosterol peroxide, cerevisterol, and 9α-hydroxycerevisterol, in addition to the previously unknown ceramide (2S,2'R,3R,4E,8E)-N-2'-hydroxyoctadecanoyl-2-amino-9-methyl-4,8-heptade-cadiene-1,3-diol.
Laboratory tests show that fruit bodies have antimicrobial activity against several strains of drug-resistant bacteria that are pathogenic in humans. Extracts inhibit the growth of the Gram-positive bacteria Enterococcus faecalis and Listeria monocytogenes, and kill the Gram-positive species Pasteurella multocida, Streptococcus agalactiae and S. pyogenes.
In a 2009 study of 16 Portuguese edible wild mushroom species, R. botrytis was shown to have the highest concentration of phenolic acids (356.7 mg per kg of fresh fruit body), made up largely of protocatechuic acid; it also had the highest antioxidant capacity. Phenolic compounds—common in fruits and vegetables—are being scientifically investigated for their potential health benefits associated with reduced risk of chronic and degenerative diseases.
|
6,073,662 |
Jerry Pentland
| 1,169,083,573 |
Australian fighter ace (1894–1983)
|
[
"1894 births",
"1983 deaths",
"Australian Army soldiers",
"Australian World War I flying aces",
"Commercial aviators",
"Military personnel from New South Wales",
"Recipients of the Air Force Cross (United Kingdom)",
"Recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross (United Kingdom)",
"Recipients of the Military Cross",
"Royal Air Force officers",
"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"
] |
Alexander Augustus Norman Dudley "Jerry" Pentland, MC, DFC, AFC (5 August 1894 – 3 November 1983) was an Australian fighter ace in World War I. Born in Maitland, New South Wales, he commenced service as a Lighthorseman with the Australian Imperial Force in 1915, and saw action at Gallipoli. He transferred to the Royal Flying Corps the following year, rising to captain. Credited with twenty-three aerial victories, Pentland became the fifth highest-scoring Australian ace of the war, after Robert Little, Stan Dallas, Harry Cobby and Roy King. He was awarded the Military Cross in January 1918 for "conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty" on a mission attacking an aerodrome behind enemy lines, and the Distinguished Flying Cross that August for engaging four hostile aircraft single-handedly.
Pentland served in the fledgling Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), and later the Royal Air Force, before going into business in 1927. His ventures included commercial flying around the goldfields of New Guinea, aircraft design and manufacture, flight instruction, and charter work. In the early 1930s, he was employed as a pilot with Australian National Airways, and also spent time as a dairy farmer. Soon after the outbreak of World War II, he re-enlisted in the RAAF, attaining the rank of squadron leader and commanding rescue and communications units in the South West Pacific. Perhaps the oldest operational pilot in the wartime RAAF, Pentland was responsible for rescuing airmen, soldiers and civilians, and earned the Air Force Cross for his "outstanding courage, initiative and skill". He became a trader in New Guinea when the war ended in 1945, and later a coffee planter. Retiring in 1959, he died in 1983 at the age of eighty-nine.
## Early life
Alexander Augustus Norman Dudley Pentland was born in Maitland, New South Wales, on 5 August 1894. His father Alexander was Irish, and his mother Annie Norma (née Farquhar) was Scottish. Educated at The King's School, Sydney, and Brighton Grammar, Melbourne, Pentland went on to study dairy farming at Hawkesbury Agricultural College, and later worked as a jackaroo. His father was a physician who joined the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during World War I and served as a major in the Australian Army Medical Corps.
## World War I
Pentland enlisted as a private in the AIF on 5 March 1915, sailing for Egypt with the 12th Light Horse Regiment aboard HMAT A29 Suevic on 13 June. In August, his unit deployed to Gallipoli, where he fought as a machine gunner before being hospitalised the following month, suffering from typhoid fever; he was evacuated to England in December. Determined to leave the trenches behind after recovering, he volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and was discharged from the AIF on 21 February 1916 to take up his commission as a temporary second lieutenant in the RFC. His first solo flight in a Maurice Farman Longhorn at Brooklands, after two hours of dual instruction, ended with him overshooting the runway and crashing in a sewage farm, but he was unhurt and immediately undertook a second solo attempt, landing successfully. It was at Brooklands that he was first nicknamed "Jerry". After completing pilot training, he was posted to France in June, flying B.E.2s with No. 16 Squadron. Though the slow and vulnerable B.E.2 was considered "Fokker fodder" by its crews, Pentland and his observer quickly managed to score the former's first aerial victory, bringing down a German Eindecker over Habourdin on 9 June. He was then posted to No. 29 Squadron and was converting to DH.2 "pusher" fighters when he broke his leg playing rugby. After recovering, he instructed at London Colney until June 1917, when he joined No. 19 Squadron, flying SPAD S.VIIs. This would become Pentland's favourite type due to its strength and manoeuvrability, even though it had to be 'flown' constantly and was unforgiving at low speed.
On 20 July 1917, soon after arriving at his new unit in France, Pentland achieved his first victory in the SPAD when he shared in the destruction of an Albatros two-seater. He followed this up with a solo "kill" on 12 August. Four days later, after stopping an enemy truck convoy in its tracks by crippling its lead vehicle with machine-gun fire, he reportedly engaged ten Albatros fighters single-handedly; by the time he had driven them off, four bullets had penetrated his leather flying suit without injuring him, and his plane had absorbed so much punishment that it had to be scrapped when he got back to base. After sharing another Albatros two-seater on 20 August, Pentland led a raid on Marcke aerodrome, home of Baron von Richthofen's Jasta 11, on 26 August. On the way, he helped bring down a DFW C.V, then achieved complete surprise at the airfield, which he and his flight proceeded to shoot up. On the return journey, he strafed an enemy train until his guns jammed and then, having managed to clear them, engaged two more German scouts. His part in the raid earned him the Military Cross, promulgated in The London Gazette on 9 January 1918:
> For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. On a recent occasion he flew to an aerodrome fifteen miles behind the enemy lines, descended to within twenty feet of the ground, and fired into eight hostile machines. On his return journey he attacked a train with considerable effect from a low altitude. He has in addition brought down several enemy machines, and has always set a splendid example of fearlessness and devotion to duty in attacking enemy balloons and troops on the ground.
Credited with one more victory during August 1917, and another four the following month, Pentland's score stood at ten when he was injured on 26 September after an artillery shell struck his SPAD and forced him to crash land. Following his recovery, he again spent time instructing before being posted back to a front-line unit, this time No. 87 Squadron, operating Sopwith Dolphins. Promoted captain, he returned to France in April 1918, having transferred the same month with the rest of the RFC to the newly formed Royal Air Force (RAF). Pentland went on to achieve thirteen victories with No. 87 Squadron, where his aggressive tactics saw him dubbed the "Wild Australian" by colleagues. Appointed commander of 'B' Flight, he also frequently acted as a "lone wolf", actively seeking dogfights with enemy aircraft on his own. On 18 June, he was alone on patrol when he engaged a flight of four Rumpler high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, forcing down three of them. This action earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross, gazetted on 3 August:
> A gallant flight commander, who in the last three months has destroyed two enemy machines and driven down four out of control. Recently, whilst on special patrol, he, single-handed, attacked four enemy aeroplanes; having driven down one out of control, he engaged the leader, damaged his engine, and compelled him to glide to his lines. One of the remaining machines followed the leader, but he attacked the other and drove it down in a steep dive.
On 25 August, Pentland attacked and destroyed two German planes, a DFW two-seater and Fokker D.VII, before himself being shot down and wounded in the foot. These would be his last victories; his grand total of twenty-three included eleven destroyed, one of which was shared, and twelve out of control, three of them shared. This score ranked him fifth among the Australian aces of the war after Robert Little, Stan Dallas, Harry Cobby and Roy King.
## Interwar period
Pentland relinquished his RAF commission and returned to Australia at the end of the war, earning money by giving joyrides in an Avro 504K. Looking for a more secure future, he joined the newly established Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in August 1921, following an interview with Wing Commander Stanley Goble, a wartime acquaintance through the RAF. Ranked flight lieutenant, Pentland was put in charge of the RAAF's complement of S.E.5 fighters at Point Cook, Victoria, part of the Imperial Gift recently donated by Great Britain. The young Air Force had the atmosphere of a flying club, where everyone knew everyone else. Tensions sometimes arose between those who had served with British forces during the war, and those who had belonged to the Australian Flying Corps (AFC); the former considered that they were discriminated against when it came to filling senior positions, and came the day Pentland and fellow ex-RAF member Hippolyte De La Rue threw an "uppity" AFC man into a mess fireplace. Deciding that his RAAF career was not progressing, Pentland applied for a short-service commission as a flying officer with the RAF in 1923, which was granted as of 23 April. He journeyed to Britain with new wife Madge (née Moffat), whom he married on 5 March, just before departing Australia; they had one daughter, Carleen, the following year. Pentland completed the course at Central Flying School, Uphavon, and became an instructor there, gaining promotion to flight lieutenant before leaving the RAF on 20 July 1926 and returning to Australia.
In 1927, Pentland formed Mandated Territory Airways with entrepreneur Albert Royal to fly freight to and from the goldfields of New Guinea. The pair bought a DH.60 Moth biplane, which Pentland ferried to the firm's base at Lae in February 1928. The business prospered in the short term, to the extent that the partners took on another Moth and more pilots. By the end of the year, Pentland was suffering from malaria and had to abandon the venture, selling one of the planes to Guinea Airways and returning to Australia with the other. After recovering in the new year, he embarked on a series of new enterprises, including aircraft manufacture, a flying school, and charter work. In February 1929, he formed the General Aircraft Company with Royal and another partner to produce an Australian-designed aeroplane, the Genairco, of which eight were eventually sold. With the Moth from Mandated Territory Airways, he established Pentland's Flying School at Mascot, New South Wales. He also flew charters with a Moth owned by The Sun newspaper, using the same aircraft that September to compete in the East-West Air Race from Sydney to Perth, as part of the celebrations for the Western Australia Centenary. The event attracted several veteran aviators of World War I, including Horrie Miller—the eventual winner on handicap—and Charles "Moth" Eaton, whom Pentland beat into fifth place across the line.
Lack of patronage led to Pentland folding his businesses and taking a job in 1930 as a pilot with Australian National Airways (ANA), a new airline founded by Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm. By 1932, ANA was in trouble as well, and Pentland left to set up as a dairy farmer on a property he bought at Singleton. Within two years, drought forced him to sell the land and he returned to earning his living as a pilot, instructing at aero clubs in Queensland and New South Wales. By late 1937, he was again employed as a transport pilot in New Guinea, where he was known as a practical joker who liked to hold a map in front of his face in apparent short-sightedness and ask his passengers if they could see a landing ground anywhere. He returned to Australia after war was declared in September 1939.
## World War II
Having offered his services to the Australian government on his return from New Guinea, Pentland rejoined the RAAF on 17 June 1940. He undertook the flying instructors' course at Central Flying School in Camden, New South Wales, and was posted as an instructor to elementary flying training schools in eastern Australia, including Brisbane, Tamworth, Temora, Bundaberg, and Lowood. Addressed by a young pilot at one school as "Pop", Pentland responded in front of the large audience, "I'm sorry son, but I don't remember sleeping with your mother". He was promoted to flight lieutenant in October 1941, and joined No. 1 Communication Flight in June 1942. Based in Victoria at Laverton and, later, Essendon, it was primarily engaged in army and naval cooperation, and operated as far afield as the Northern Territory and New Guinea.
Promoted to squadron leader, in November 1942 Pentland was posted to Port Moresby, New Guinea, as commanding officer (CO) of No. 1 Rescue and Communication Squadron, better known as "Pentland's Flying Circus". The official history of Australia in the war described this as the RAAF's "most unusual operational unit", asserting that its "strange assortment of light aircraft was as varied and as appropriate to its task as was the flying record of its commander ...". Its inventory included such types as the de Havilland Tiger Moth, DH.84 Dragon, Fox Moth, Dragon Rapide, and Avro Anson. Perhaps the RAAF's oldest pilot in any theatre of operations, Pentland was responsible for the rescue of downed US airmen, as well as the evacuation of civilians and soldiers. He also organised aerial surveys around Daru and Milne Bay, developing new bases and emergency airfields at locales such as Bena Bena, Abau, Kulpi, and Port Moresby.
Posted back to Australia after relinquishing command of No. 1 Rescue and Communication Squadron in June 1943, Pentland received radar training and helped to set up the RAAF's early warning grid in northern Australia. He returned to New Guinea in March 1944 as CO of No. 8 Communication Unit, Goodenough Island, which had been formed in November 1943 from Pentland's old Rescue and Communications Squadron. Operating Tiger Moth, Supermarine Walrus, Consolidated PBY Catalina, Dornier Do 24, Bristol Beaufort, CAC Boomerang, Bristol Beaufighter, and Vultee Vengeance aircraft, the unit performed reconnaissance and bombing sorties over New Britain and north-eastern New Guinea, as well as rescue and survey missions. In July 1945, Pentland was posted to Mascot as CO of No. 3 Communication Unit, serving until September. His achievements in New Guinea earned him the Air Force Cross, the citation being promulgated on 22 February 1946 and concluding:
> Squadron Leader PENTLAND has, at all times, displayed outstanding courage, initiative and skill, and these qualities, together with his excellent knowledge of New Guinea and its climatic conditions, have made his services invaluable, not only to the R.A.A.F., but to the U.S. Army Air Forces and the New Guinea Forces as well.
## Later life
With the end of hostilities in the Pacific, Pentland was discharged from the RAAF on 2 November 1945. He took the opportunity to purchase surplus military equipment in New Guinea and established himself as a trader in Finschhafen, later expanding to Lae and Wau. In 1948, he went into business as a coffee planter in Goroka, and also recruited labour from the highlands for industries on the coast. Prospering as a planter, he contributed to development of the region by building Goroka's original constant-flowing water supply and encouraging other businesses to set up there. His ongoing commitments in New Guinea meant that he was not invested with his Air Force Cross until 1950. In 1959, he sold his interests in Goroka and retired with Madge to their seaside home in Bayview, New South Wales. Madge Pentland died in 1982, and Jerry eighteen months later, on 3 November 1983, at the War Veterans Home in Collaroy. He was survived by daughter Carleen, and cremated on 7 November.
|
42,029 |
George III
| 1,173,664,883 |
King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1760 to 1820
|
[
"1738 births",
"1820 deaths",
"18th-century British people",
"18th-century Irish monarchs",
"19th-century British monarchs",
"Blind royalty and nobility",
"British art collectors",
"British blind people",
"British book and manuscript collectors",
"British deaf people",
"British people of the American Revolution",
"British princes",
"Burials at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle",
"Children of Frederick, Prince of Wales",
"Deaf royalty and nobility",
"Deafblind people",
"Deaths from pneumonia in England",
"Dukes of Bremen and Verden",
"Dukes of Edinburgh",
"Dukes of Saxe-Lauenburg",
"English blind people",
"English people with disabilities",
"English pretenders to the French throne",
"George III of the United Kingdom",
"Heirs to the British throne",
"Kings of Hanover",
"Knights of the Garter",
"Monarchs of Great Britain",
"Monarchs of the Isle of Man",
"Monarchs of the United Kingdom",
"People from Westminster",
"Prince-electors of Hanover",
"Princes of Wales",
"Regency era",
"Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew"
] |
George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 1738 – 29 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 25 October 1760 until his death in 1820. The Acts of Union 1800 unified Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with George as its king. He was concurrently Duke and Prince-elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg ("Hanover") in the Holy Roman Empire before becoming King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. He was a monarch of the House of Hanover who, unlike his two predecessors, was born in Great Britain, spoke English as his first language, and never visited Hanover.
George was born during the reign of his paternal grandfather, King George II, as the first son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. Following his father's death in 1751, Prince George became heir apparent and Prince of Wales. He succeeded to the throne on George II's death in 1760. The following year, he married Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, with whom he had 15 children. George III's life and reign were marked by a series of military conflicts involving his kingdoms, much of the rest of Europe, and places farther afield in Africa, the Americas and Asia. Early in his reign, Great Britain defeated France in the Seven Years' War, becoming the dominant European power in North America and India. However, many of Britain's American colonies were soon lost in the American War of Independence. Further wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France from 1793 concluded in the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. In 1807, the transatlantic slave trade was banned from the British Empire.
In the later part of his life, George had recurrent—and eventually permanent—mental illness. Although it has since been suggested that he had bipolar disorder or the blood disease porphyria, the cause of his illness remains unknown. George suffered a final relapse in 1810, and his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, was named Prince Regent the following year. When the King died aged 81 in 1820, the Regent succeeded him as George IV. George III thus reigned during much of the Georgian and Regency eras. At the time of his death, he was the longest-lived and longest-reigning British monarch, having reigned for 59 years and 96 days; he remains the longest-lived and longest-reigning male monarch.
## Early life
George was born in Norfolk House in St James's Square, London, on 4 June 1738. He was a grandson of King George II and the eldest son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. As he was born two months prematurely and thought unlikely to survive, he was baptised the same day by Thomas Secker, who was both Rector of St James's Church, Piccadilly, and Bishop of Oxford. One month later he was publicly baptised at Norfolk House, again by Secker. His godparents were King Frederick I of Sweden (for whom Lord Baltimore stood proxy), his uncle Frederick III, Duke of Saxe-Gotha (for whom Lord Carnarvon stood proxy), and his great-aunt Sophia Dorothea, Queen in Prussia (for whom Lady Charlotte Edwin stood proxy).
George grew into a healthy, reserved and shy child. The family moved to Leicester Square, where George and his younger brother Edward (later Duke of York and Albany) were educated together by private tutors. Family letters show that he could read and write in both English and German, as well as comment on political events of the time, by the age of eight. He was the first British monarch to study science systematically.
Apart from chemistry and physics, his lessons included astronomy, mathematics, French, Latin, history, music, geography, commerce, agriculture and constitutional law, along with sporting and social accomplishments such as dancing, fencing and riding. His religious education was wholly Anglican. At the age of 10, George took part in a family production of Joseph Addison's play Cato and said in the new prologue: "What, tho' a boy! It may with truth be said, A boy in England born, in England bred." Historian Romney Sedgwick argued that these lines appear "to be the source of the only historical phrase with which he is associated".
King George II disliked Prince Frederick and took little interest in his grandchildren. However, in 1751, Frederick died unexpectedly from a lung injury at the age of 44, and his son George became heir apparent to the throne and inherited his father's title of Duke of Edinburgh. The King now took more interest in his grandson and created him Prince of Wales three weeks later.
In the spring of 1756, as George approached his eighteenth birthday, the King offered him a grand establishment at St James's Palace, but George refused the offer, guided by his mother and her confidant, Lord Bute, who later served as prime minister. George's mother, now the Dowager Princess of Wales, preferred to keep George at home where she could imbue him with her strict moral values.
## Accession and marriage
In 1759, George was smitten with Lady Sarah Lennox, sister of Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, but Lord Bute advised against the match and George abandoned his thoughts of marriage. "I am born for the happiness or misery of a great nation," he wrote, "and consequently must often act contrary to my passions." Nevertheless, George and his mother resisted attempts by the King to marry George to Princess Sophie Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Sophie Caroline instead married Frederick, Margrave of Bayreuth.
The following year, at the age of 22, George succeeded to the throne when his grandfather George II died suddenly on 25 October 1760, two weeks before his 77th birthday. The search for a suitable wife intensified: after giving consideration to a number of Protestant German princesses, George's mother sent Colonel David Graeme with, on her son's behalf, an offer of marriage to Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Charlotte accepted. While a royal household and staff were assembled for Charlotte in London, Lord Harcourt, the royal Master of the Horse, escorted her from Strelitz to London. Charlotte arrived in the afternoon of 8 September 1761 and the marriage ceremony was conducted that same evening in the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace. George and Charlotte's coronation was held at Westminster Abbey a fortnight later on 22 September. George never took a mistress (in contrast with his grandfather and his sons), and the couple enjoyed a happy marriage until his mental illness struck.
The King and Queen had 15 children—nine sons and six daughters. In 1762, George purchased Buckingham House (on the site now occupied by Buckingham Palace) for use as a family retreat. His other residences were Kew Palace and Windsor Castle. St James's Palace was retained for official use. He did not travel extensively and spent his entire life in southern England. In the 1790s, the King and his family took holidays at Weymouth, Dorset, which he thus popularised as one of the first seaside resorts in England.
## Early reign
### Early regnal years
George, in his accession speech to Parliament, proclaimed: "Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Britain." He inserted this phrase into the speech, written by Lord Hardwicke, to demonstrate his desire to distance himself from his German forebears, who were perceived as caring more for Hanover than for Britain. During George III's lengthy reign, Britain was a constitutional monarchy, ruled by his ministerial government and prominent men in Parliament. Although his accession was at first welcomed by politicians of all parties, the first years of his reign were marked by political instability, largely as a result of disagreements over the Seven Years' War. George came to be perceived as favouring Tory ministers, which led to his denunciation by the Whigs as an autocrat.
On his accession, the Crown lands produced relatively little income; most revenue was generated through taxes and excise duties. George surrendered the Crown Estate to Parliamentary control in return for a civil list annuity for the support of his household and the expenses of civil government. Claims that he used the income to reward supporters with bribes and gifts are disputed by historians who say such claims "rest on nothing but falsehoods put out by disgruntled opposition". Debts amounting to over £3 million over the course of George's reign were paid by Parliament, and the civil list annuity was increased from time to time. He aided the Royal Academy of Arts with large grants from his private funds, and may have donated more than half of his personal income to charity. Of his art collection, the two most notable purchases are Johannes Vermeer's Lady at the Virginals and a set of Canalettos, but it is as a collector of books that he is best remembered. The King's Library was open and available to scholars and was the foundation of a new national library.
### Legislation and politics
In May 1762, the incumbent Whig government of Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, was replaced with one led by Lord Bute, a Scottish Tory. Bute's opponents worked against him by spreading the calumny that he was having an affair with the King's mother, and by exploiting anti-Scottish sentiment amongst the English. John Wilkes, a member of parliament, published The North Briton, which was both inflammatory and defamatory in its condemnation of Bute and the government. Wilkes was eventually arrested for seditious libel but he fled to France to escape punishment; he was expelled from the House of Commons and found guilty in absentia of blasphemy and libel. In 1763, after concluding the Peace of Paris which ended the war, Lord Bute resigned, allowing the Whigs under George Grenville to return to power. Britain received enormous concessions, including West Florida. Britain restored to France lucrative slave-sugar islands in the West Indies, including Guadeloupe and Martinique. France ceded Canada to Britain, in addition to all land between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mississippi River, except New Orleans, which was ceded to Spain.
Later that year, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 placed a limit upon the westward expansion of the American colonies and created an Indian reserve. The Proclamation aimed to divert colonial expansion to the north (to Nova Scotia) and to the south (Florida), and protect the British fur trade with the Indians. The Proclamation Line did not bother the majority of settled farmers, but it was unpopular with a vocal minority. This discontent ultimately contributed to conflict between the colonists and the British government. With the American colonists generally unburdened by British taxes, the government thought it appropriate for them to pay towards the defence of the colonies against native uprisings and the possibility of French incursions.
The central issue for the colonists was not the amount of taxes but whether Parliament could levy a tax without American approval, for there were no American seats in Parliament. The Americans protested that like all Englishmen they had rights to "no taxation without representation". In 1765, Grenville introduced the Stamp Act, which levied a stamp duty on every document in the British colonies in North America. Since newspapers were printed on stamped paper, those most affected by the introduction of the duty were the most effective at producing propaganda opposing the tax.
Meanwhile, George had become exasperated at Grenville's attempts to reduce the king's prerogatives, and tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade William Pitt the Elder to accept the office of prime minister. After a brief illness, which may have presaged his illnesses to come, George settled on Lord Rockingham to form a ministry, and dismissed Grenville.
Lord Rockingham, with the support of Pitt and the King, repealed Grenville's unpopular Stamp Act. Rockingham's government was weak, and he was replaced as prime minister in 1766 by Pitt, whom George created Earl of Chatham. The actions of Lord Chatham and George III in repealing the Act were so popular in America that statues of them both were erected in New York City. Lord Chatham fell ill in 1767, and Augustus FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, took over the government. Grafton did not formally become prime minister until 1768. That year, John Wilkes returned to England, stood as a candidate in the general election, and came top of the poll in the Middlesex constituency. Wilkes was again expelled from Parliament. He was re-elected and expelled twice more, before the House of Commons resolved that his candidature was invalid and declared the runner-up as the victor. Grafton's government disintegrated in 1770, allowing the Tories led by Lord North to return to power.
### Family issues and discontent in America
George was deeply devout and spent hours in prayer, but his piety was not shared by his brothers. George was appalled by what he saw as their loose morals. In 1770, his brother Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn, was exposed as an adulterer. The following year, Henry married a young widow, Anne Horton. The King considered her inappropriate as a royal bride: she was from a lower social class and German law barred any children of the couple from the Hanoverian succession.
George insisted on a new law that essentially forbade members of the royal family from legally marrying without the consent of the sovereign. The subsequent bill was unpopular in Parliament, including among George's own ministers, but passed as the Royal Marriages Act 1772. Shortly afterwards, another of George's brothers, Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, revealed he had been secretly married to Maria, Countess Waldegrave, the illegitimate daughter of Sir Edward Walpole. The news confirmed George's opinion that he had been right to introduce the law: Maria was related to his political opponents. Neither lady was ever received at court.
Lord North's government was chiefly concerned with discontent in America. To assuage American opinion most of the custom duties were withdrawn, except for the tea duty, which in George's words was "one tax to keep up the right [to levy taxes]". In 1773, the tea ships moored in Boston Harbor were boarded by colonists and the tea was thrown overboard, an event that became known as the Boston Tea Party. In Britain, opinion hardened against the colonists, with Chatham now agreeing with North that the destruction of the tea was "certainly criminal".
With the clear support of Parliament, Lord North introduced measures, which were called the Intolerable Acts by the colonists: the Port of Boston was shut down and the charter of Massachusetts was altered so that the upper house of the legislature was appointed by the Crown instead of elected by the lower house. Up to this point, in the words of Professor Peter Thomas, George's "hopes were centred on a political solution, and he always bowed to his cabinet's opinions even when sceptical of their success. The detailed evidence of the years from 1763 to 1775 tends to exonerate George III from any real responsibility for the American Revolution." Though both the Americans and older British historians characterised George as a tyrant, in these years he acted as a constitutional monarch supporting the initiatives of his ministers.
## American War of Independence
The American War of Independence was the culmination of the civil and political American Revolution. In the 1760s, a series of acts by Parliament was met with resistance in Britain's Thirteen Colonies in America. In particular they rejected new taxes levied by Parliament, a body in which they had no direct representation. The colonies had previously enjoyed a high level of autonomy in their internal affairs and viewed Parliament's acts as a denial of their rights as Englishmen. Armed conflict began between British regulars and colonial militiamen at the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. The Second Continental Congress sent petitions to the Crown for intervention with Parliament, but the King and Parliament ignored them. George declared the American leaders to be traitors and a year of fighting ensued. Thomas Paine's book Common Sense referred to George III as "the Royal Brute of Great Britain".
The colonies declared their independence in July 1776, listing twenty-seven grievances against the British king and legislature while asking the support of the populace. Among George's other offenses, the declaration charged, "He has abdicated Government here ... He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people." The gilded equestrian statue of the King in New York was pulled down. The British captured the city in 1776 but lost Boston, and the grand strategic plan of invading from Canada and cutting off New England failed with the surrender of British Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne following the battles of Saratoga.
Prime Minister Lord North was not an ideal war leader, but George III managed to give Parliament a sense of purpose to fight, and North was able to keep his cabinet together. North's cabinet ministers the Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Lord George Germain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, proved to lack leadership skills suited for their positions.
George III is often accused of obstinately trying to keep Great Britain at war with the rebels, despite the opinions of his own ministers. In the words of British historian George Otto Trevelyan, the King was determined "never to acknowledge the independence of the Americans, and to punish their contumacy by the indefinite prolongation of a war which promised to be eternal." He wanted to "keep the rebels harassed, anxious, and poor, until the day when, by a natural and inevitable process, discontent and disappointment were converted into penitence and remorse". Later historians defend George by saying that, in the context of the times, no king would willingly surrender such a large territory, and his conduct was far less ruthless than contemporaneous monarchs in Europe. After Saratoga, both Parliament and the British people were in favour of the war; recruitment ran at high levels and political opponents, though vocal, remained a small minority.
With the setbacks in America, Lord North asked to transfer power to Lord Chatham, whom he thought more capable, but George refused to do so; he suggested instead that Chatham serve as a subordinate minister in North's administration, but Chatham refused; he died later in the same year. North was allied to the "King's Friends" in Parliament and believed that George III had the right to exercise powers. In early 1778, Louis XVI of France (Britain's chief rival) signed a treaty of alliance with the United States. The French fleet outran the British naval blockade of the Mediterranean and sailed to America. The conflict now affected America, Europe, and India. Charles III of Spain had misgivings because of his own colonies but decided to side with France in the war in limited fashion in 1779. One faction of the Dutch Republic aided the Americans, whereas another aided Britain, whose allies included Loyalists and German auxiliaries. Lord Gower and Lord Weymouth both resigned from the government. Lord North again requested that he also be allowed to resign, but he stayed in office at George III's insistence.
During the summer of 1779, a combined French-Spanish naval fleet threatened to invade England and transport 31,000 French troops across the English Channel. George III said that Britain was confronted by the "most serious crisis the nation ever knew". In August, 66 warships entered the English channel, but sickness, hunger, and adverse winds forced the French-Spanish armada to withdraw, ending the invasion threat.
In late 1779, George III advocated sending more British warships and troops across the Atlantic to the West Indies. He boldly said: "We must risk something, otherwise we will only vegetate in this war. I own I wish either with spirit to get through it, or with a crash be ruined." In January 1780, 7,000 British troops under General Sir John Vaughan were transported to the West Indies. Nonetheless, opposition to the costly war was increasing, and in June 1780 contributed to disturbances in London known as the Gordon riots.
As late as the siege of Charleston in 1780, Loyalists could still believe in their eventual victory, as British troops inflicted defeats on the Continental forces at the Battle of Camden and the Battle of Guilford Court House. In late 1781, the news of Lord Cornwallis's surrender at the siege of Yorktown reached London; North's parliamentary support ebbed away and he resigned the following year. George drafted an abdication notice, which was never delivered. He finally accepted the defeat in America and authorized peace negotiations. Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States in the Treaties of Paris signed in 1782 and 1783. In early 1783, George III privately conceded "America is lost!" He reflected that the Northern colonies had developed into Britain's "successful rivals" in commercial trade and fishing. Up to 70,000 Loyalists fled to Canada, the Caribbean, or England.
John Adams was appointed American minister to London in 1785, by which time George had become resigned to the new relationship between his country and the former colonies. He told Adams, "I was the last to consent to the separation; but the separation having been made and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power."
## Mid reign
### Government
With the collapse of Lord North's ministry in 1782, the Whig Lord Rockingham became prime minister for the second time, but died within months. The King then appointed Lord Shelburne to replace him. Charles James Fox, however, refused to serve under Shelburne, and demanded the appointment of William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland. In 1783, the House of Commons forced Shelburne from office and his government was replaced by the Fox–North Coalition. Portland became prime minister, with Fox and Lord North, as foreign secretary and home secretary respectively.
The King disliked Fox intensely, for his politics as well as his character: he thought Fox unprincipled and a bad influence on the Prince of Wales. George III was distressed at having to appoint ministers not of his liking, but the Portland ministry quickly built up a majority in the House of Commons, and could not be displaced easily. He was further dismayed when the government introduced the India Bill, which proposed to reform the government of India by transferring political power from the East India Company to Parliamentary commissioners. Although George actually favoured greater control over the company, the proposed commissioners were all political allies of Fox. Immediately after the House of Commons passed it, George authorised Lord Temple to inform the House of Lords that he would regard any peer who voted for the bill as his enemy. The bill was rejected by the Lords; three days later, the Portland ministry was dismissed, and William Pitt the Younger was appointed prime minister, with Temple as his secretary of state. On 17 December 1783, Parliament voted in favour of a motion condemning the influence of the monarch in parliamentary voting as a "high crime" and Temple was forced to resign. Temple's departure destabilised the government, and three months later the government lost its majority and Parliament was dissolved; the subsequent election gave Pitt a firm mandate.
Pitt's appointment was a great victory for George. It proved that the king could appoint prime ministers on the basis of his own interpretation of the public mood without having to follow the choice of the current majority in the House of Commons. Throughout Pitt's ministry, George supported many of Pitt's political aims and created new peers at an unprecedented rate to increase the number of Pitt's supporters in the House of Lords. During and after Pitt's ministry, George was extremely popular in Britain. The British people admired him for his piety and for remaining faithful to his wife. He was fond of his children and was devastated at the death of two of his sons in infancy, in 1782 and 1783 respectively. Nevertheless, he set his children a strict regimen. They were expected to attend rigorous lessons from seven in the morning and to lead lives of religious observance and virtue. When his children strayed from George's principles of righteousness, as his sons did as young adults, he was dismayed and disappointed.
### Signs of illness
By this time, George's health was deteriorating. He had a mental illness characterised by acute mania, which was possibly a symptom of the genetic disease porphyria, although this has been questioned: the original authors of the theory, Ida Macalpine and her son Richard Hunter, were "highly selective" in choosing evidence to support their claim. The most likely diagnosis, using more recent techniques, is bipolar disorder. However, a study of samples of George's hair published in 2005 revealed high levels of arsenic, a cause of metabolic blood disorders and thus a possible trigger for porphyria. The source of the arsenic is not known, but it could have been a component of medicines or cosmetics.
George may have had a brief episode of disease in 1765, and a longer episode began in the summer of 1788. At the end of the parliamentary session, he went to Cheltenham Spa to recuperate and in August visited the Bishop of Worcester at Hartlebury Castle and Viscount Mount Edgcumbe at Cotehele, Cornwall, with the Queen, and their daughters the Princess Royal and Princesses Augusta and Elizabeth. It was the furthest he had ever been from London, but his condition worsened. In November of that year, he became seriously deranged, sometimes speaking for many hours without pause, causing him to foam at the mouth and his voice to become hoarse. George would frequently repeat himself and write sentences with over 400 words at a time, and his vocabulary became "more complex, creative and colourful", possible symptoms of bipolar disorder. His doctors were largely at a loss to explain his illness, and spurious stories about his condition spread, such as the claim that he shook hands with a tree in the mistaken belief that it was the King of Prussia. Treatment for mental illness was primitive by modern standards; George's doctors, who included Francis Willis, treated the King by forcibly restraining him until he was calm, or applying caustic poultices to draw out "evil humours".
In the reconvened Parliament, Fox and Pitt wrangled over the terms of a regency during the King's incapacity. While both agreed that it would be most reasonable for the Prince of Wales to act as regent, Fox suggested, to Pitt's consternation, that it was the Prince's absolute right to act on his ill father's behalf with full powers. Pitt, fearing he would be removed from office if the Prince of Wales were empowered, argued that it was for Parliament to nominate a regent, and wanted to restrict the regent's authority. In February 1789, the Regency Bill, authorising the Prince of Wales to act as regent, was introduced and passed in the House of Commons, but before the House of Lords could pass the bill, George III recovered.
## Later reign
### War in Europe
After George's recovery, his popularity, and that of Pitt, continued to increase at the expense of Fox and the Prince of Wales. His humane and understanding treatment of two insane assailants, Margaret Nicholson in 1786 and John Frith in 1790, contributed to his popularity. James Hadfield's failed attempt to shoot George in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 15 May 1800 was not political in origin but motivated by the apocalyptic delusions of Hadfield and Bannister Truelock. George seemed unperturbed by the incident, so much so that he fell asleep in the interval.
The French Revolution of 1789, in which the French monarchy had been overthrown, worried many British landowners. France declared war on Great Britain in 1793; in response to the crisis, George allowed Pitt to increase taxes, raise armies, and suspend the right of habeas corpus. The First Coalition to oppose revolutionary France, which included Austria, Prussia, and Spain, broke up in 1795 when Prussia and Spain made separate peace with France. The Second Coalition, which included Austria, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire, was defeated in 1800. Only Great Britain was left fighting Napoleon Bonaparte, the First Consul of the French Republic.
A brief lull in hostilities allowed Pitt to concentrate effort on Ireland, where there had been an uprising and attempted French landing in 1798. In 1800, the British and Irish Parliaments passed an Act of Union that took effect on 1 January 1801 and united Great Britain and Ireland into a single state, known as the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland". George used the opportunity to abandon the title "king of France", which English and British sovereigns had maintained since the reign of Edward III. It was suggested that George adopt the title "Emperor of the British Isles", but he refused. As part of his Irish policy, Pitt planned to remove certain legal disabilities that applied to Roman Catholics. George III claimed that to emancipate Catholics would be to violate his coronation oath, in which sovereigns promise to maintain Protestantism. Faced with opposition to his religious reform policies from both the King and the British public, Pitt threatened to resign. At about the same time, George had a relapse of his previous illness, which he blamed on worry over the Catholic question. On 14 March 1801, Pitt was formally replaced by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Henry Addington. Addington opposed emancipation, instituted annual accounts, abolished income tax and began a programme of disarmament. In October 1801, he made peace with the French, and in 1802 signed the Treaty of Amiens.
George did not consider the peace with France as real; in his view it was an "experiment". The war resumed in 1803, but public opinion distrusted Addington to lead the nation in war, and instead favoured Pitt. An invasion of England by Napoleon seemed imminent, and a massive volunteer movement arose to defend England against the French. George's review of 27,000 volunteers in Hyde Park, London, on 26 and 28 October 1803 and at the height of the invasion scare, attracted an estimated 500,000 spectators on each day. The Times said: "The enthusiasm of the multitude was beyond all expression." A courtier wrote on 13 November that "The King is really prepared to take the field in case of attack, his beds are ready and he can move at half an hour's warning." George wrote to his friend Bishop Hurd, "We are here in daily expectation that Bonaparte will attempt his threatened invasion ... Should his troops effect a landing, I shall certainly put myself at the head of mine, and my other armed subjects, to repel them." After Admiral Lord Nelson's famous naval victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, the possibility of invasion was extinguished.
In 1804, George's recurrent illness returned; after his recovery, Addington resigned and Pitt regained power. Pitt sought to appoint Fox to his ministry, but George refused. Lord Grenville perceived an injustice to Fox, and refused to join the new ministry. Pitt concentrated on forming a coalition with Austria, Russia, and Sweden. This Third Coalition, however, met the same fate as the First and Second Coalitions, collapsing in 1805. The setbacks in Europe took a toll on Pitt's health, and he died in 1806, reopening the question of who should serve in the ministry. Grenville became Prime Minister, and his "Ministry of All the Talents" included Fox. Grenville pushed through the Slave Trade Act 1807, which passed both houses of Parliament with large majorities. George was conciliatory towards Fox, after being forced to capitulate over his appointment. After Fox's death in September 1806, the King and ministry were in open conflict. To boost recruitment, the ministry proposed a measure in February 1807 whereby Roman Catholics would be allowed to serve in all ranks of the armed forces. George instructed them not only to drop the measure, but also to agree never to set up such a measure again. The ministers agreed to drop the measure then pending, but refused to bind themselves in the future. They were dismissed and replaced by the Duke of Portland, as the nominal Prime Minister, with actual power being held by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Spencer Perceval. Parliament was dissolved, and the subsequent election gave the ministry a strong majority in the House of Commons. George III made no further major political decisions during his reign; the replacement of Portland by Perceval in 1809 was of little real significance.
### Final years
In late 1810, at the height of his popularity, King George, already virtually blind with cataracts and in pain from rheumatism, suffered a relapse into his mental disorder and became dangerously ill. In his view the malady had been triggered by stress over the death of his youngest and favourite daughter, Princess Amelia. The princess's nurse reported that "the scenes of distress and crying every day ... were melancholy beyond description." George accepted the need for the Regency Act 1811, and the Prince of Wales (later George IV) acted as regent for the remainder of the King's life. Despite signs of a recovery in May 1811, by the end of the year George III had become permanently insane, and lived in seclusion at Windsor Castle until his death.
Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated in 1812 and was replaced by Lord Liverpool. Liverpool oversaw British victory in the Napoleonic Wars. The subsequent Congress of Vienna led to significant territorial gains for Hanover, which was elevated from an electorate to a kingdom. Meanwhile, George's health deteriorated. He developed dementia, and became completely blind and increasingly deaf. He was incapable of knowing or understanding that he was declared King of Hanover in 1814, or that his wife died in 1818. At Christmas 1819, he spoke nonsense for 58 hours, and for the last few weeks of his life was unable to walk. He died of pneumonia, at Windsor Castle at 8:38 pm on 29 January 1820, six days after the death of his fourth son Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn. His favourite son, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, was with him. George III lay in state for two days, and his funeral and interment took place on 16 February in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.
## Slavery
Over the course of George's reign, a coalition of abolitionists and Atlantic slave uprisings caused the British public to spurn slavery. According to the historian Andrew Roberts, "George never bought or sold a slave in his life. He never invested in any of the companies that did such a thing. He signed legislation to abolish slavery." George wrote a document in the 1750s "denouncing all of the arguments for slavery, and calling them an execration and ridiculous and 'absurd'," but the King and his son, the Duke of Clarence, supported the efforts of the London Society of West India Planters and Merchants to delay the abolition of the British slave trade for almost 20 years. Pitt conversely wished to see slavery abolished but, because the cabinet was divided and the King was in the pro-slavery camp, Pitt decided to refrain from making abolition official government policy. Instead, he worked toward abolition in an individual capacity.
On 7 November 1775, during the American War of Independence, John Murray, Lord Dunmore, issued a proclamation that freed slaves of Rebel masters who would enlist to put down the colonial rebellion. Dunmore was the last Royal Governor of Virginia, appointed by King George III in July 1771. Dunmore's Proclamation inspired slaves to escape from captivity and fight for the British. On 30 June 1779, George III's Commanding General Henry Clinton broadened Dunmore's proclamation with his Philipsburg Proclamation. For all colonial slaves who fled their Rebel masters, Clinton forbade their recapture and resale, giving them protection by the British military. Approximately 20,000 freed slaves joined the British, fighting for George III. In 1783, given British certificates of freedom, 3,000 former slaves, including their families, settled in Nova Scotia.
Between 1791 and 1800, almost 400,000 Africans were shipped to the Americas, by 1,340 slaving voyages, mounted from British ports, including Liverpool and Bristol. On 25 March 1807 George III signed into law An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, under which the transatlantic slave trade was banned in the British Empire.
## Legacy
George was succeeded in turn by two of his sons, George IV and William IV, who both died without surviving legitimate children, leaving the throne to Victoria, the only legitimate child of his fourth son Prince Edward.
George III lived for 81 years and 239 days and reigned for 59 years and 96 days: both his life and his reign were longer than those of any of his predecessors and subsequent kings; only queens Victoria and Elizabeth II lived and reigned longer.
George III was dubbed "Farmer George" by satirists, at first to mock his interest in mundane matters rather than politics, but later to portray him as a man of the people, contrasting his homely thrift with his son's grandiosity. Under George III, the British Agricultural Revolution reached its peak and great advances were made in fields such as science and industry. There was unprecedented growth in the rural population, which in turn provided much of the workforce for the concurrent Industrial Revolution. George's collection of mathematical and scientific instruments is now owned by King's College London but housed in the Science Museum, London, to which it has been on long-term loan since 1927. He had the King's Observatory built in Richmond-upon-Thames for his own observations of the 1769 transit of Venus. When William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, he at first named it Georgium Sidus (George's Star) after the King, who later funded the construction and maintenance of Herschel's 1785 40-foot telescope, which at the time was the biggest ever built.
George III hoped that "the tongue of malice may not paint my intentions in those colours she admires, nor the sycophant extoll me beyond what I deserve" but, in the popular mind, George III has been both demonised and praised. While very popular at the start of his reign, by the mid-1770s George had lost the loyalty of revolutionary American colonists, though it has been estimated that as many as half of the colonists remained loyal. The grievances in the United States Declaration of Independence were presented as "repeated injuries and usurpations" that he had committed to establish an "absolute Tyranny" over the colonies. The declaration's wording has contributed to the American public's perception of George as a tyrant. Contemporary accounts of George III's life fall into two camps: one demonstrating "attitudes dominant in the latter part of the reign, when the King had become a revered symbol of national resistance to French ideas and French power", while the other "derived their views of the King from the bitter partisan strife of the first two decades of the reign, and they expressed in their works the views of the opposition".
Building on the latter of these two assessments, British historians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as Trevelyan and Erskine May, promoted hostile interpretations of George III's life. However, in the mid-twentieth century the work of Lewis Namier, who thought George was "much maligned", started a re-evaluation of the man and his reign. Scholars of the later twentieth century, such as Butterfield and Pares, and Macalpine and Hunter, are inclined to treat George sympathetically, seeing him as a victim of circumstance and illness. Butterfield rejected the arguments of his Victorian predecessors with withering disdain: "Erskine May must be a good example of the way in which an historian may fall into error through an excess of brilliance. His capacity for synthesis, and his ability to dovetail the various parts of the evidence ... carried him into a more profound and complicated elaboration of error than some of his more pedestrian predecessors ... he inserted a doctrinal element into his history which, granted his original aberrations, was calculated to project the lines of his error, carrying his work still further from centrality or truth." In pursuing war with the American colonists, George III believed he was defending the right of an elected Parliament to levy taxes, rather than seeking to expand his own power or prerogatives. In the opinion of modern scholars, during the long reign of George III, the monarchy continued to lose its political power and grew as the embodiment of national morality.
## Titles, styles, honours and arms
### Titles and styles
- 4 June 1738 – 31 March 1751: His Royal Highness Prince George
- 31 March 1751 – 20 April 1751: His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh
- 20 April 1751 – 25 October 1760: His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales
- 25 October 1760 – 29 January 1820: His Majesty The King
In Great Britain, George III used the official style "George the Third, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and so forth". In 1801, when Great Britain united with Ireland, he dropped the title of king of France, which had been used for every English monarch since Edward III's claim to the French throne in the medieval period. His style became "George the Third, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith."
In Germany, he was "Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg, Arch-Treasurer and Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire" (Herzog von Braunschweig und Lüneburg, Erzschatzmeister und Kurfürst des Heiligen Römischen Reiches) until the end of the empire in 1806. He then continued as duke until the Congress of Vienna declared him "King of Hanover" in 1814.
### Honours
- : Royal Knight of the Garter, 22 June 1749
- Ireland: Founder of the Most Illustrious Order of St. Patrick, 5 February 1783
### Arms
Before his succession, George was granted the royal arms differenced by a label of five points Azure, the centre point bearing a fleur-de-lis Or on 27 July 1749. Upon his father's death, and along with the dukedom of Edinburgh and the position of heir-apparent, he inherited his difference of a plain label of three points Argent. In an additional difference, the crown of Charlemagne was not usually depicted on the arms of the heir, only on the Sovereign's.
From his succession until 1800, George bore the royal arms: Quarterly, I Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England) impaling Or a lion rampant within a tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); II Azure three fleurs-de-lys Or (for France); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland); IV tierced per pale and per chevron (for Hanover), I Gules two lions passant guardant Or (for Brunswick), II Or a semy of hearts Gules a lion rampant Azure (for Lüneburg), III Gules a horse courant Argent (for Saxony), overall an escutcheon Gules charged with the crown of Charlemagne Or (for the dignity of Archtreasurer of the Holy Roman Empire).
Following the Acts of Union 1800, the royal arms were amended, dropping the French quartering. They became: Quarterly, I and IV England; II Scotland; III Ireland; overall an escutcheon of Hanover surmounted by an electoral bonnet. In 1816, after the Electorate of Hanover became a kingdom, the electoral bonnet was changed to a crown.
## Issue
## Ancestry
## See also
- Cultural depictions of George III
- List of mentally ill monarchs
|
12,981,647 |
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
| 1,173,465,335 |
2008 video game
|
[
"2.5D fighting games",
"2008 video games",
"Crossover fighting games",
"Crossover video games",
"D.I.C.E. Award for Fighting Game of the Year winners",
"Esports games",
"Fighting games",
"Fighting games used at the Evolution Championship Series tournament",
"Multiplayer and single-player video games",
"Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection games",
"Platform fighters",
"Super Smash Bros.",
"Video games about parallel universes",
"Video games developed in Japan",
"Video games directed by Masahiro Sakurai",
"Video games produced by Kensuke Tanabe",
"Video games scored by Nobuo Uematsu",
"Video games scored by Shogo Sakai",
"Video games using Havok",
"Video games with user-generated gameplay content",
"Wii Wi-Fi games",
"Wii games",
"Wii-only games"
] |
Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a 2008 crossover fighting video game developed by Sora Ltd. and Game Arts, and published by Nintendo for the Wii. The third installment in the Super Smash Bros. series, it was announced at a pre-E3 2005 press conference by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. Masahiro Sakurai, director of the previous two games in the series, assumed the role of director at Iwata's request. Game development began in October 2005 with a creative team that included members from several Nintendo and third-party development teams. After delays due to development problems, the game was released worldwide in 2008.
The number of playable characters in Brawl has grown from that in Super Smash Bros. Melee, although some characters from Melee were cut in Brawl. Brawl is the first game in the series to have playable third-party characters. Like that of its predecessors, the objective of Brawl is to knock opponents off the screen. It is a departure from traditional fighting games, notably in its simplified move commands and emphasis on ring outs over knockouts. It includes a more extensive single-player mode than its predecessors, known as the Subspace Emissary. This mode is a plot-driven, side-scrolling beat 'em up featuring computer-generated cut scenes. Brawl supports multiplayer battles with up to four combatants, and is the first game of its franchise to feature online battles via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. The game is unique in that it can be played with four different controllers, including the Wii Remote, Wii Remote with Nunchuk, GameCube controller, and Classic Controller, simultaneously.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl received universal acclaim, with praise centered on its entertainment value despite issues relating to its content loading times. Its musical score, composed through a collaboration of 38 renowned video game composers, was lauded for its representation of different generations in gaming history. Brawl received an aggregate review score of 93% on Metacritic and was named the "Fighting Game of the Year" by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. In 2010, the game was included as one of the titles in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. As of 2023, it is the eighth best-selling Wii game of all time, with over thirteen million copies sold worldwide. It was followed by Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U in 2014.
## Gameplay
Following its predecessors, Brawl is a platform fighter that uses a battle system unlike that of typical fighting games. Players can choose from a large selection of characters, each attempting to knock their opponents off the screen as they fight on various stages. The characters in Brawl include most of the same ones as the predecessors, such as Mario and Pikachu. Instead of using traditional health bars that start at a maximum value and lose value, Brawl characters start the game with 0%; the value rises as they take damage, to a maximum of 999%. As a character's percentage increases, the character flies further back when hit. When a character is knocked beyond a stage's boundary and disappears from the screen, the character loses either a life, a point, or coins, depending on the mode of play. Brawl includes a function which allows players to create profiles with personalized button configurations for each control method along with their chosen username.
The characters in Brawl fight using a variety of attacks, that give the player a wider selection than the predecessors. Players execute each move by pressing a button in conjunction with a tilt of the control stick or a press of the D-pad, depending on the mode of control. In addition to basic attacks, characters have access to more powerful moves, known as smash attacks. Each character has four unique moves, which often cause effects besides damage to an opponent. Brawl introduces character-specific super attacks, referred to as "Final Smashes". Significantly more powerful than regular attacks, these moves have a wide variety of effects that range from nearly unavoidable blasts to temporary transformations. Final Smash moves can be performed by destroying a Smash Ball: a colorful floating orb bearing the Smash Bros. logo.
Characters can use items ranging from projectiles to melee weapons; each has a different effect on the characters around it. Although many items have returned from previous Super Smash Bros. games, new ones have been introduced as well. Some returning items have changed appearance and function. Two varieties of items, Assist Trophies and Poké Balls, temporarily summon guest characters and Pokémon, respectively, that generally aid the summoner. They cannot be controlled by players and are usually invincible.
### Playable characters
Brawl allows the player to select from 39 playable characters, 25 of which are initially available from the start. Some are new, but others return from Melee—in some cases updated or refined, either in appearance, fighting capabilities, or both. For example, Link and Fox have adopted designs from more recent titles at the time, while Samus has gained the ability to change into Zero Suit Samus. Dr. Mario, Roy, Young Link, Mewtwo and Pichu are the first five characters to not return from a previous game, though they do appear as stickers and/or trophies.
Some previously represented series have had more characters added to Brawl. Diddy Kong from the Donkey Kong series, Ike from the Fire Emblem series, and Lucas from Mother 3 make their first appearance in the Smash Bros. series. Other newcomers are the first to represent their series. These include characters such as Pit, representing the Kid Icarus series for the first time since the 1991 Game Boy game Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, Olimar of the Pikmin series, Lucario from Pokemon: Diamond and Pearl, and Wario, as he appears in Nintendo's WarioWare. Solid Snake, the protagonist of Konami's Metal Gear franchise, and Sonic the Hedgehog from Nintendo's former rival Sega are the first third-party characters to appear in a Super Smash Bros. game, with Snake being the first character from an M-rated game to appear in the series.
### Stages
Brawl's stages are generally based on plot devices from the various game series of Super Smash Bros. Stages range from floating platforms to moving areas where the characters must stay within the field of play. Each stage has a boundary that cannot be passed, or the character will be "KO'd", thus losing a life or "point", depending on the mode of play.
Brawl contains 41 selectable stages, 29 of which are initially available. Many stages undergo elaborate changes while battles take place, such as a cycling day-to-night system or changing seasons. A stage based on the Animal Crossing series features a live events system in which special events may occur depending on the date and time. Environmental gameplay mechanics are featured in this installment, such as destructible terrain and the ability to float. Unlike its predecessors, Brawl includes stages based on third-party games such as the Metal Gear Solid-inspired Shadow Moses Island. The game also includes 10 stages taken from its predecessor, Super Smash Bros. Melee.
Brawl allows players to create their own stages in a mode called Stage Builder. Players can save their stages to an SD card or to the internal memory of the Wii console. Through Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, players can submit their creations to their friends, or to Nintendo to receive a daily stage from the service.
### Multiplayer
In addition to the standard multiplayer mode, Brawl features other multiplayer modes and options in Group mode. Special Melee, from the previous game, returns as Special Brawl. In this mode, players are able to battle in matches using special rules for a greater level of customization. Whereas previously standard options such as "Giant Melee" or "Invisible Melee" were limited to one feature per match, players may now select multiple options for a single match. Another returning game type, Tourney mode (formerly Tournament mode), enables players to create an elimination-based tournament, where up to 32 players can play, with a large number of game-controlled or human-controlled opponents. A "Rotation" feature has been introduced in Brawl, which allows up to sixteen players to compete in sequence by switching out winners or losers after each round.
### Single-player
Like its predecessors, Super Smash Bros. Brawl includes various modes of play from the previous game designed for a single player. In Classic Mode, players fight individual characters in a selected order. Each match features an arena or opponent from a particular series, such as The Legend of Zelda or Pokémon. Several matches have a unique battle condition, such as a metal opponent, large opponent, or a two-on-two team battle. Similar to Classic mode are All Star Mode and Boss Battles, where the player has only one life to defeat all of the playable characters and bosses respectively.
Brawl features Events, matches with predetermined battle conditions such as defeating opponents within a time limit or reaching a specific goal. New to single-player mode, each of the 41 Events has three difficulty levels, with a distinct high score recorded for each. In addition to the normal set of 41 Events played with a single player, a smaller set of 21 two-player Events is included.
Stadium mode is a collection of objective-oriented minigames. Returning from the two previous games is the "Target Smash!" minigame, in which the player must break ten targets as quickly as possible. In the Home-Run Contest, the player must beat Sandbag to inflict as much damage as possible in 10 seconds, then strike it with a Home-Run Bat. Updated from Melee, all Stadium mode minigames feature cooperative or competitive multiplayer.
#### Adventure Mode: The Subspace Emissary
Super Smash Bros. Brawl features a new Adventure mode titled "The Subspace Emissary", abbreviated to "SSE". This mode features a unique storyline and numerous side-scrolling levels and bosses, as well as cutscenes explaining the plot. The mode introduces a group of antagonists called the Subspace Army, led by the Ancient Minister. Some of these enemies appeared in previous Nintendo video games, such as Petey Piranha from the Mario series and a squadron of R.O.B.s based on classic Nintendo hardware. The Subspace Army boasts a number of original enemies, such as the Roader, a robotic unicycle; the Bytan, a one-eyed spherical creature which can replicate itself if left alone; and the Primid, enemies that fight with a variety of weapons. Though the game is primarily played as a single-player mode, cooperative multiplayer is available. The SSE features a mechanism which strengthens a character's abilities in the form of collectible stickers which can be applied to the player's Trophies.
Unlike other game modes, the SSE has a team system for the characters, with a limited choice of characters at the beginning of the mode. Others join the team as the game progresses, while some characters may leave the team temporarily. Most characters start off with their own teams, but the teams merge occasionally until they become a unified team by the end of the game. In cooperative multiplayer, once one player loses a life, an ally can take his or her place until the number of lives run out. If there are no lives left and player one is defeated, the game is interrupted, with the choice of quitting or starting again from the previous "door" the player passed through.
During the development of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Sakurai said that this mode would be more "fleshed out" than the single-player modes in previous Smash Bros. titles. Shigeru Miyamoto has explained that Sakurai always wanted to have a deep single-player game, but he wanted Sakurai to focus more on the multiplayer aspects in the previous titles since there were already many single-player games of this kind. Both were possible with the development time allotted for Brawl. Sakurai selected Kazushige Nojima, a scenario writer known for his work on the Final Fantasy series, to construct a plotline for the mode in cooperation with him.
### Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection
Brawl allows players to play against distant opponents via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Online multiplayer games can be played either with registered friends or with randomly selected participants. Additionally, players can converse with up to four phrases that are preset by the player, which appear as speech bubbles when activated. These names and phrases are not displayed in random-player matches. The Spectator mode allows players to watch matches being played between other players, and bet on the outcome using coins earned within the game. The winner of the match earns a jackpot of coins.
Snapshots may be taken during battles or in certain other modes, which can later be sent to friends or submitted to Nintendo. Video replay footage can be captured in specific game modes, including Brawl and Target Smash! modes, and sent to friends in the same manner. Snapshots, custom stages and replays can be submitted to Nintendo's "Smash Service" for a chance to get the content featured and updated on all Smash Service-enabled Wii consoles. Since Brawl's launch, the Smash Service has updated the game's Vault with one user submitted snapshot, custom stage and replay data chosen by Nintendo every day; each new update overwrites the previous. The user can choose to not receive updates from the service through the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection options menu. After June 30, 2009, the Smash Service stopped accepting content from its users. After May 20, 2014, the Nintendo Wi-Fi service for Brawl was discontinued.
### Vault
Returning from Melee are trophies, statues of video game characters and objects that give brief histories or descriptions of their subjects, such as Mario and Link, or other characters and items that appear in their respective series. A minigame, the Coin Launcher, replaces the lottery machine from Melee as the primary method of obtaining trophies. The Coin Launcher is a machine that uses coins as projectiles to shoot trophies and counter incoming dangers. Coins can also be used to bet on the victor of online battles via Spectator mode. Trophies unavailable in Coin Launcher mode are obtained by using an item called the Trophy Stand on weakened enemy characters and bosses within The Subspace Emissary. Trophies obtained in this manner may contain information on the backstory of the Subspace Emissary.
In addition to trophies, players can now collect stickers of video game artwork. Players can place stickers and trophies onto virtual backgrounds and take snapshots, which can be sent to other players via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Stickers can be applied to characters to power up their abilities in the Subspace Emissary.
Other stickers or trophies which cannot be collected through the Coin Launcher minigame, Subspace Emissary, or Vs. matches can be unlocked from the Challenges menu, an interactive display which catalogs unlocked features and items in gridded windows. Once a window has been broken and its contents are unlocked, horizontally adjacent windows display the conditions necessary to unlock them.
Brawl contains demo versions of several Nintendo games, named "Masterpieces", which were originally released for older consoles and feature characters playable in Brawl. These games use Virtual Console technology to emulate older hardware and have time constraints ranging from thirty seconds to five minutes. Some use save data to allow the player to play a certain scenario or level. Along with Masterpieces comes the inclusion of the Chronicles section, a library of previous Nintendo games which lists games either previously made or published by Nintendo on all of its consoles. New games appear when certain characters, trophies or stickers related to the game are unlocked.
## Plot
In the Adventure mode titled "The Subspace Emissary", Mario and Kirby face each other on a stadium located in the Super Smash Bros. universe. In this world, when a fighter is defeated, they become a trophy which can be revived by touching the base by an active fighter. Suddenly, the Battleship Halberd appears, releasing a stream of purple particles known as Shadow Bugs that form the soldiers of the Subspace Army. The Ancient Minister, the army's cloaked general, arrives and detonates a Subspace Bomb, which can only be detonated by the sacrifice of two R.O.B. units, and transports the stadium into Subspace, an alternate dimension where the Subspace Army resides. The Ancient Minister's advance prompts the fighters to join forces and attempt to repel the threat, while villain fighters harvest the power of the allied fighters by using powerful weapons that instantly reduce them to their trophy forms and using the Shadow Bugs on some of them to create evil doppelgängers. King Dedede begins independently gathering some fallen fighters, placing golden brooches on them.
The Ancient Minister is revealed as a subordinate to Ganondorf, Bowser, and Wario, who are under orders from Master Hand to draw the world into Subspace. Wario, who had kidnapped Ness, is defeated by the Pokémon Trainer and Lucas, and his trophy form is then helplessly sucked into a Subspace Bomb's detonation. Meanwhile, Meta Knight leaves his group to reclaim the Halberd as he allies with Lucario and Snake and neutralizes the source of the Shadow Bugs – Mr. Game & Watch.
The Ancient Minister's true identity is found to be that of the leading R.O.B. unit, who rebels against Ganondorf to join the fighters when the latter detonates several bombs on its home, the Isle of the Ancients, to create a rift into Subspace large enough to summon the Subspace Army's ultimate weapon – an enormous warship. The three major groups converge and use the Halberd to battle the ship. Although the Halberd is destroyed, all of the characters escape unscathed and Ganondorf and Bowser retreat after Kirby destroys the ship with his Dragoon. After betraying Bowser, Ganondorf discovers that Master Hand was being controlled by the army's actual leader and the embodiment of Subspace, Tabuu, who defeats Ganondorf and Master Hand.
The fighters confront Tabuu, but the latter annihilates them all with a cataclysmic attack known as "Off Waves" and scatters their trophy forms all throughout his dimension. Dedede's brooches are soon revealed to be a fail-safe against Tabuu's Off Waves and revive Luigi, Dedede, Ness, and Kirby, who rescue the fighters and navigate a gargantuan maze-like amalgamation of the areas that were transported into Subspace where Tabuu is located. As Tabuu is about to use his Off Waves to dispose of the fighters once and for all, he is attacked by Sonic, who weakens him; the fighters then defeat Tabuu and save the day.
In the final scene, the fighters look at a great luminous cross on the horizon where the Isle of the Ancients once resided.
## Development
At a pre-E3 2005 press conference on May 17, 2005, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced that the next installment of Super Smash Bros. was soon to be in development for its next console and would be a launch title with Wi-Fi compatibility for online play. The announcement was a surprise to Sakurai, who left HAL Laboratory in 2003. He was not informed of Nintendo's intent to release another Smash Bros. game, despite the fact that Iwata told Sakurai shortly after his resignation from HAL that if a new Smash game were developed, he would want Sakurai to again serve as director. It was not until the day after the conference that Iwata requested that Sakurai hold a private meeting with him, where he was asked to be involved as Brawl's director. Sakurai agreed to become director, and development of the game began in October 2005, when Nintendo opened a new office in Tokyo just for its production. Help from a variety of studios such as Monolith Soft and Paon was enlisted, with Game Arts as the main team in the preliminary development stages. In addition, several Smash Bros. staff members that resided in the area of the new office joined the project. Altogether, roughly 100 individuals worked on the project full-time, and were given access to all the original material and tools from the development of Melee, courtesy of HAL Laboratory.
The game was absent from Nintendo's Wii showing at its pre-E3 2006 press conference. Nintendo officially revealed the game under the name of Super Smash Bros. Brawl the next day, May 10, 2006, along with the game's first official trailer during the E3 After-Hours Press Conference. In an interview with IGN, Sakurai said the Wii's motion sensing features might not be included because "[his team] found that trying to implement too much motion-sensory functionality can get in the way of the game". As far as Wi-Fi play is concerned, Sakurai stated his plan was to include Wi-Fi connection compatibility from the start. He goes on to say, "One of the primary reasons Super Smash Bros. Brawl was created was that Nintendo, when taking Wii online, wanted to have Smash Bros. to do that." However, Sakurai stated on the Japanese version of the Smash Bros. website that there were "hurdles of all sorts that [made] it very difficult" to implement online battles. Furthermore, he said that an online ranking system is unlikely to be implemented. During a test play between Sakurai and Hideo Kojima, Kojima stated that the game felt complete and that Nintendo "could put it out now and it would sell millions of copies". Starting May 22, 2007 and ending April 14, 2008, the game's official site had daily weekday updates, revealing characters, stages, items, music and more.
At the Nintendo Media Conference at E3 2007, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé announced that Super Smash Bros. Brawl would be released on December 3, 2007, in the Americas. However, just two months before its anticipated December release, the development team asked for more time to work on the game. During the Nintendo Conference on October 10, 2007, President Iwata announced the delay,
> In order to fine-tune Smash Bros., with this unprecedented game depth, we have decided that we have to take a little more time to complete the game than we announced before. We are sorry for the fans that are already anxiously waiting for the launch, but we would like to launch this game on January 24, 2008 in Japan. As for the North American launch, we will review that too, and our local subsidiaries will make their own announcements.
On October 11, 2007, George Harrison of Nintendo of America stated that Super Smash Bros. Brawl would be released on February 10, 2008, in North America. On January 15, 2008, the game's release was delayed one week in Japan to January 31 and nearly a month in the Americas to March 9. On April 24, 2008, Nintendo of Europe confirmed that Brawl would be released in Europe on June 27. Similarly, Nintendo Australia announced on May 15, 2008, that the game would be released in that region on June 26, 2008.
### Technical issues
Super Smash Bros. Brawl uses a dual-layer disc due to the size of the game data. Nintendo of America has stated that some Wii consoles may have difficulty reading the high-density software due to a contaminated laser lens. Nintendo offered a free repair for owners who experienced this issue.
### Music
Sakurai revealed a list of 36 musicians providing musical arrangements for the game on May 22, 2007. He asked composers such as Koji Kondo, Yasunori Mitsuda, Yoko Shimomura, and Yuzo Koshiro, amongst many others, "to listen to an elite selection of Nintendo music and arrange several of their favorite songs." The game's various stages have multiple musical tracks which players can listen to using the new "My Music" feature, including some pieces taken directly from other games without any modification or special arrangements. This feature allows the player to select how often a piece gets played during a stage. Some of the pieces need to be unlocked by collecting CDs which are awarded via the game's Challenges Mode, or by spawning randomly while playing. The game's original music was composed by Takahiro Nishi, Shogo Sakai, Masaaki Iwasaki, Yutaka Iraha, Keigo Ozaki, and Kentaro Ishizaka, while the main theme was composed by former Final Fantasy series composer, Nobuo Uematsu, and arranged by Sakai. The main theme has Latin lyrics that allude to various key aspects of the game, including fighting for glory, rivals becoming companions, and the fame of the characters.
### Inclusion of characters
Sakurai originally stated that he did not want to emphasize Japan-only characters. However, reflecting upon Marth and Roy's inclusion in Melee, which led to the international release of the Fire Emblem series, he became more interested in characters exclusive to Japan-only releases. Sakurai said that third-party characters would amount to two at the most, aside from Snake. The inclusion of Konami-created character Solid Snake may seem to conflict with the Super Smash Bros. paradigm—to only include characters from games made by Nintendo and its second parties—but Sakurai said that the creator of Metal Gear Hideo Kojima "practically begged" him to include Solid Snake in Melee, which was not feasible as development was too far in for the game. This in turn led to his appearance in the following game instead. Additionally, Lucas from Mother 3 was supposed to be added in Melee, but was excluded due to the constant delay and ultimate cancellation of Mother 3 of the Nintendo 64.
Japanese fans were asked to submit their desired characters and musical themes via a forum on the game's official Japanese site for possible inclusion. The most requested third-party character, Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog, was announced to be in Brawl on October 10, 2007. Shigeru Miyamoto wanted Sonic to be used in Melee, but Sonic could not be implemented because of time constraints.
During Brawl'''s development, Sakurai revealed that he initially considered adding Miis as playable fighters. However, due to concerns that the Miis would not be interesting enough characters and that they could be used for online bullying, Sakurai had to decide against it. Miis would later be integrated into the series as playable characters in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.
## Reception
Super Smash Bros. Brawl has received universal acclaim and has been commercially successful worldwide. In the United States, the game sold 874,000 units on launch day and 1.4 million units in its first week to become the fastest-selling video game in Nintendo of America's history, according to Nintendo. According to the NPD Group, it was the best-selling game of March 2008 in Canada and the United States, selling 200,000 and 2.7 million units, respectively; the game is the best-selling game of 2008 in Canada as of 1 April 2008. The game generated \$122 million in revenue in March 2008. Electronic Entertainment Design and Research analyst Jesse Divnich attributed the game's strong US sales to it fulfilling "the needs of the casual, social, and sub-13-year-old markets". Upon release in PAL regions, Brawl reached number one on both European and Australian sales charts. According to the NPD Group, GfK Chart-Track, and Enterbrain, the game had sold 3.539 million units in the United States, 213,000 in the United Kingdom, and 1.681 million in Japan, respectively, for a total of 5.433 million units as of 1 August 2008. It ultimately received a "Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom. It is also the fifth best-selling game of Japan in 2008, selling 1,747,113 copies. It was the fourth best-selling game of 2008 in the United States, selling over 4.17 million copies. By March 31, 2020, the game had sold 13.32 million units worldwide, according to Nintendo.
The editors of Japanese game magazine Famitsu, who awarded it a perfect score, praised the variety and depth of the single-player content, the unpredictability of Final Smashes, and the dynamic fighting styles of the characters. Chris Slate of Nintendo Power awarded Brawl a perfect score in the March 2008 issue, calling it "one of the very best games that Nintendo has ever produced". GameSpot editor Lark Anderson noted that Brawl's "simple controls and gameplay make it remarkably accessible to beginners, yet still appealing to veterans", while GameTrailers mentioned the amount of content that gives the game "staying power that few other games possess". Eurogamer praised the game's ability to stay fun in both single-player and multiplayer modes, while "fulfilling its usual role of dominating a willing crowd's evening into the early hours, and now allowing you to sustain that after everyone's gone home". Game Revolution hailed Brawl's soundtrack as "spectacular ... spanning a generous swath of gaming history". Game Informer highlighted Brawl's "finely tuned balance, core fighting mechanics, and local multiplayer modes". Edge concluded that, while the Smash Bros. games have often been "derided as button-mashing", Brawl features "one of the most enduringly innovative and deep systems of any fighter".
IGN editor Matt Casamassina, however, noted that, although Brawl is "completely engrossing and wholly entertaining", it suffers from "long loading times" and "uninspired enemies and locales" in the Subspace Emissary adventure mode. He also described the graphics as "an enhanced version of Melee", with backgrounds that lack detail in areas. GameSpy echoed this by equating the quality of the graphics to that of the GameCube. Mitchell Saltzman of Gameworld Network expressed disappointment at the lack of "stat tracking, voice chat, and a mostly lag free environment" in the online mode. NGamer's Matthew Castle points to the franchise's lack of innovation with the verdict, "Smash Bros risks growing too familiar. It never breeds contempt, but it doesn't quite muster that Galaxy magic." Jeff Gerstmann rated the game 4 out of 5 stars on Giant Bomb, saying that players who are not into Nintendo's history or multiplayer "probably won't understand what all the fuss is about in the first place". 1UP.com, however, suggested that Brawl is not directed exclusively towards serious gamers, as it offers "a curious diversion for uninterested gamers" as well.
### Awards
Super Smash Bros. Brawl won multiple Wii-specific awards from IGN in IGN's 2008 video game awards, including "Best Fighting Game", "Best Local Multiplayer Game" and "Best Original Score". It was also nominated by them for several other Wii-specific awards, including "Best Graphics Technology", "Best Use of Sound", "Best Online Multiplayer Game" and "Game of the Year". The game also won "Best Fighting Game" in GameSpot's Game of the Year awards 2008. The game placed 15th in Official Nintendo Magazine's 100 greatest Nintendo games of all time.
Brawl was ranked by Nintendo Power as the fifth best game of the 2000s released on a Nintendo system.
## Legacy
### Modding
Brawl is unusually moddable for a console game, due to the "Smash Stack" exploit found within the game's built-in stage builder when loading stages from an SD card. Rather than stage data, a specialized program can be inserted onto the SD card that renders the builder unusable while present, but allows loading of fan-made patches from the card on top of the game's on-disc data. These patches range from simple character skins and balance adjustments to more complex modifications such as whole additional characters and extra stages more complex than the internal stage builder allows.
#### Project M
In 2011, a team of competitive Super Smash Bros. players, known collectively as the Project M Back Room (PMBR), began development on a mod of Brawl titled Project M. The project was designed to retool Brawl to play more like its predecessor, Super Smash Bros. Melee, in response to complaints about Brawl's physics, slower-paced gameplay, use of chance elements, and mechanics of certain attacks compared to Melee. The mod rebalances each of Brawl's playable characters, adds new character costumes and gameplay modes, and adds the characters Mewtwo and Roy, who were present in Melee but omitted from Brawl'''s roster. The mod has received praise from many reviewers and fans, with the "Version 3.0" demo having received over 300,000 downloads as of February 2014. The project ceased development on December 1, 2015.
|
947,355 |
Fatima Whitbread
| 1,156,384,769 |
British javelin thrower (born 1961)
|
[
"1961 births",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1980 Summer Olympics",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1982 Commonwealth Games",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1984 Summer Olympics",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1986 Commonwealth Games",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1988 Summer Olympics",
"BBC Sports Personality of the Year winners",
"Commonwealth Games bronze medallists for England",
"Commonwealth Games medallists in athletics",
"Commonwealth Games silver medallists for England",
"English adoptees",
"English autobiographers",
"English female javelin throwers",
"English people of Greek Cypriot descent",
"English people of Turkish Cypriot descent",
"European Athletics Championships medalists",
"Living people",
"Medalists at the 1984 Summer Olympics",
"Medalists at the 1988 Summer Olympics",
"Medallists at the 1982 Commonwealth Games",
"Medallists at the 1986 Commonwealth Games",
"Members of the Order of the British Empire",
"Olympic athletes for Great Britain",
"Olympic bronze medalists in athletics (track and field)",
"Olympic bronze medallists for Great Britain",
"Olympic silver medalists in athletics (track and field)",
"Olympic silver medallists for Great Britain",
"People educated at Torells School",
"People from Chadwell St Mary",
"People from Stoke Newington",
"Sportspeople from Essex",
"Sportspeople from the London Borough of Hackney",
"Sportspeople of Turkish Cypriot descent",
"Women autobiographers",
"World Athletics Championships medalists",
"World Athletics Championships winners"
] |
Fatima Whitbread, MBE (; 3 March 1961) is a British retired javelin thrower. She broke the world record with a throw of in the qualifying round of the 1986 European Athletics Championships in Stuttgart, and became the first British athlete to set a world record in a throwing event. Whitbread went on to win the European title that year, and took the gold medal at the 1987 World Championships. She is also a two-time Olympic medallist, winning bronze at the 1984 Summer Olympics and silver at the 1988 Summer Olympics. She was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 1987.
After a difficult early childhood, Fatima Vedad was adopted by the family of Margaret Whitbread, a javelin coach. Whitbread won the 1977 English Schools' Athletics Championships intermediate title, and was selected for the 1978 Commonwealth Games, where she finished sixth. The following year, she took gold at the 1979 European Athletics Junior Championships. During her career, she had a well-publicised rivalry with another British javelin athlete, Tessa Sanderson. Whitbread's later career was affected by a long-term shoulder injury, which she believed dated back to her world record throw in 1986. The 1990 UK Athletics Championships was the last event in which she participated, sustaining a further shoulder injury there. In 1992 she formally retired from competition.
Whitbread has appeared on several television programmes, including I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! in 2011 and 2023, in which she finished in third place both times. She was named the Sports Writers' Association Sportswoman of the Year in 1986 and 1987. She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1987 Birthday Honours, for services to athletics.
## Early life
Fatima Vedad was born on 3 March 1961 in Stoke Newington, London, to a Turkish Cypriot mother and Greek Cypriot father. She grew up in a series of children's homes, occasionally being left in the care of her abusive biological mother. In a 2003 interview with The Observer, she said, "it was a nightmare of a childhood and it was only because I loved sport so much that I got through it and met my true mother."
Vedad started throwing the javelin aged 11. According to her account, she had taken up an interest in track and field events after being inspired by the myth of Atalanta, "whom no man could outrun except by cheating, and whose javelin killed a terrible monster"; and by Mary Peters, who won the gold medal at the 1972 Summer Olympics' women's pentathlon. Vedad met javelin thrower David Ottley at a stadium and asked him if she could use his javelin. He asked her to wait until the coach arrived. The coach was Margaret Whitbread, a physical education teacher at a local school, whom Vedad had previously met when Whitbread refereed a netball match that she played in. After discovering that Vedad stayed at a children's home, Margaret Whitbread passed on some boots and a javelin from a girl who had retired from the event. Three years later, Vedad was adopted by Margaret Whitbread and her family. She spent her teenage years in Chadwell St Mary, Essex, where she attended the Torells School in nearby Grays.
## Career
### Early career
Whitbread won the English Schools' Athletics Championships intermediate title in 1977, and set a national intermediate record of in winning the Amateur Athletic Association (AAA) women's championship the following month. She placed sixth in the javelin throw at the 1978 Commonwealth Games, throwing . Whitbread won gold in the javelin event at the 1979 European Athletics Junior Championships, throwing . She was selected for the 1980 Summer Olympics event, but, achieving only , she failed to qualify for the final. At the 1982 Commonwealth Games, Whitbread took the bronze medal, throwing , which was behind champion Sue Howland, from Australia.
Having finished behind fellow British competitor Tessa Sanderson in a run of 18 competitions, Whitbread finally defeated her rival with a throw of to win the UK Athletics Championship in 1983, Whitbread won the silver medal at the inaugural World Championships in 1983, having narrowly qualified for the final. She led throughout the final until Tiina Lillak bettered her mark with her last throw of the contest. A few days before the 1984 Summer Olympics, Whitbread had a stomach operation but was still able to travel to the Games and compete. She finished in the bronze medal position, with , and Sanderson () won gold. Lillak, who had a stress fracture in her right foot, won the silver medal. After the result, Whitbread commented that "I am so disappointed ... I was not right on the night."
At the 1986 Commonwealth Games in July, Whitbread broke the Games record twice during her first three throws, and led with a distance of , before Sanderson achieved and won. Whitbread sat down crying on the field after the result for around 30 minutes. After the medal ceremony, she commented, while still visibly upset: "12 years of hard work. Still no [gold] medal ... I've waited two long years since [the 1984 Summer Olympics]. And now I'm humiliated." Sanderson, who had placed behind Whitbread in all of their seven post-1984 Olympics meetings before the Games, said "I don't mind losing to Fatima in the smaller competitions, but not in the big ones."
### World record, and European and World championship wins
The following month, Whitbread broke the javelin world record with a throw of in the qualifying round of the 1986 European Championships, more than 2 m further than the record set by Petra Felke of East Germany the previous year. She was the first British athlete to set a world record in a throwing event. Felke led for the first three rounds, before Whitbread produced a throw of in the fourth round, and in the fifth round to win her first major championship gold. Whitbread later wrote that "All the years of training had finally come to something ... I went on my lap of honour ... Spontaneously, I wiggled my hips in happiness, a victory wiggle." The record was beaten by Felke in July 1987 with a throw of .
Whitbread qualified for the final of the 1987 World Championships in second place behind Felke. Her throw of was, at the time, the third-longest ever, and won her the title ahead of Felke. Sanderson was fourth. Her celebratory wiggles after defeating Felke in the World and European event became well known in the UK. She was voted winner of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award in 1987. David Powell wrote in The Times, that "To that practiced smile, she has added the 'Whitbread wiggle'. She is succeeding in bringing personality to her event in the same way that Willie Banks did to the triple jump."
### Later career
In the months leading up to the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Whitbread suffered from several ailments: a shoulder injury, boils, glandular fever and problems with her gums. Whitbread won the silver medal behind Felke, with a throw that, although her best of the season, was some four metres less than her rival. Whitbread commented "If I had to be beaten, I am glad it was by Petra."
Whitbread's later career was affected by a long-term shoulder injury, which she believed dated back to her world record throw in 1986. The 1990 UK Athletics Championships was the last event that she participated in, and she sustained a further shoulder injury there. In 1992 she formally retired from competition.
### Rivalry with Tessa Sanderson
Alan Hubbard wrote in a 1990 article in The Observer about Whitbread and Sanderson that "their hate-hate relationship has been one of the most enduring in British sport," lasting almost a decade. In 2009, Tom Lamont commented in The Guardian that "Whitbread and Sanderson were always uneasy rivals and the enmity that developed during their overlapping careers became as famous as their achievements, and seems to survive in their retirement." Hubbard cited Sanderson's perception that Whitbread received preferential treatment from the British Amateur Athletic Board. The Board's promotions officer, Andy Norman, who had a role in setting British athletes' fees, was a family friend of Whitbread and her mother. In 1985, Whitbread often participated in international events but Sanderson took part in only one in the season up to June 1985. Sanderson claimed that this was because she lacked supporters in the meetings where representatives were determined; she said that "Fatima has Andy Norman looking after her in meetings ... and, of course, her mother, Margaret, is the national event coach". In 1987, Sanderson threatened to boycott six official athletics events, for which she was to be paid £1,000 each by British Athletics compared to Whitbread's £10,000. Sanderson also objected to the Whitbreads' endorsement of Howland, who competed at the 1990 Commonwealth Games after a two-year doping suspension, since Howland was Australian, and Sanderson felt they should have supported British athletes instead.
During their respective careers, Whitbread gained one world and one European title; Sanderson won an Olympic and three Commonwealth golds. In all, Sanderson placed higher in 27 of the 45 times that they faced each other in competition, although Whitbread had the better results of the pair from 1984 to 1987. In 1993, coach Peter Lawler favourably compared Whitbread's technique to Sanderson's, writing in IAAF New Studies in Athletics that "the alignments of Whitbread and [Mick] Hill are as straight as a cricket text book's bat. Whitbread perfected the turning on to the shaft while Sanderson often sagged through the delivery."
## Personal life
Whitbread wrote in her 2012 autobiography that she began a personal relationship with Norman shortly after his divorce in 1986. In 1993, journalist Cliff Temple investigated claims that members of the Chafford Hundred Athletic Club, which was run by Whitbread and included leading athletes personally managed by her fiancé Norman, received preferential treatment from Norman in his role as promotions officer of the British Athletics Federation (BAF). Temple authored an article in The Sunday Times suggesting that there could be a conflict of interests. Temple killed himself in January 1994. It emerged during the inquest into Temple's death that Norman had threatened and falsely smeared him. Norman spread rumours that Temple had sexually harassed Shireen Bailey, whom Temple coached. Bailey denied the claims. Norman was dismissed from his job as promotions officer for the BAF following the federation's inquiry into the matter. The inquest concluded that although the end of Temple's marriage was a contributing factor to his suicide, that the allegations by Norman were the other factor, and had "tipped the balance".
In 1997, Whitbread married Norman in Copthorne, West Sussex. The couple, who had a son together, divorced in 2006. Norman died of a heart attack in 2007.
Whitbread has published two autobiographies written with Adrianne Blue, Fatima: The Autobiography of Fatima Whitbread in 1988, and Survivor: The Shocking and Inspiring Story of a True Champion in 2012.
Whitbread is a Christian but, in her own words, "not devout."
### Honours and awards
Whitbread was runner-up to Nigel Mansell in the 1986 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards, and won the title the following year. She was named the Sports Writers' Association Sportswoman of the Year in 1986 and 1987. She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1987 Birthday Honours, for services to athletics.
## In media
Whitbread has been a guest on television programmes including A Question of Sport (on which she first appeared in 1984), The Little and Large Show (1987 and 1988) and The Wright Stuff (2012). In 1989, she was one of the celebrities with experience of fostering or adoption who took part in Find a Family on ITV. The series featured the celebrities' own reflections, and also highlighted specific children, inviting viewers to contact the programme if they were interesting in fostering or adopting them.
In January 1995 Whitbread was interviewed by Andrew Neil, on his one-on-one show Is This Your Life? on Channel 4 which included discussion of Cliff Temple's suicide. Writing in The Guardian, Nancy Banks-Smith described how Whitbread had "stonewalled with stoicism and without sweating" and been unclear in her answers about this. Whitbread also spoke about her unhappiness at how Ben Johnson had been treated after being found doping with steroids. Neil's treatment of Whitbread attracted viewer complaints.
She was a featured "masked celebrity" on Celebrity Wrestling in 2005, and lost her bout against Victoria Silvstedt.
In November 2011, Whitbread took part in the ITV show I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! Whitbread and fellow campmate Antony Cotton left on 2 December 2011, placing her third. One of the challenges on the show involved her wearing a helmet containing about 7,500 cockroaches. The segment was halted after one of the insects crawled up her nose. It was removed by flushing it out through her mouth with water.
In 2012, she was a regular fitness expert appearing on This Morning. Later that year, the stand-alone documentary Fatima Whitbread: Growing Up in Care featured Whitbread's reflections on her own troubled childhood, and her conversations with others who had experienced serious problems from their parent and problems with the UK care system. In The Guardian, David Stubbs wrote "More emotional than forensic, this is compulsory viewing nonetheless." In 2020, she trekked the Sultans Trail for BBC Two's Pilgrimage: Road to Istanbul.
In 2023, she appeared in I'm a Celebrity... South Africa, placing third again after losing the penultimate trial to camp mates Jordan Banjo and Myleene Klass.
## Career statistics
### International competitions
The table shows Whitbread's performances representing Great Britain and England in international competitions. (q) Indicates overall position in qualifying round.
### National titles
- 1977 English Schools' Athletics Championships (intermediate)
- AAA Junior Championships (under 17): 1977
- 6 times AAA champion: 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1987
- 8 times UK Athletics Champion: 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988
## Publications
## Television and radio
## Explanatory notes
|
21,661,375 |
The Author's Farce
| 1,099,871,361 |
1730 play by Henry Fielding
|
[
"1730 plays",
"Comedy plays",
"Plays by Henry Fielding"
] |
The Author's Farce and the Pleasures of the Town is a play by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding, first performed on 30 March 1730 at the Little Theatre, Haymarket. Written in response to the Theatre Royal's rejection of his earlier plays, The Author's Farce was Fielding's first theatrical success. The Little Theatre allowed Fielding the freedom to experiment, and to alter the traditional comedy genre. The play ran during the early 1730s and was altered for its run starting 21 April 1730 and again in response to the Actor Rebellion of 1733. Throughout its life, the play was coupled with several different plays, including The Cheats of Scapin and Fielding's Tom Thumb.
The first and second acts deal with the attempts of the central character, Harry Luckless, to woo his landlady's daughter, and his efforts to make money by writing plays. In the second act, he finishes a puppet theatre play titled The Pleasures of the Town, about the Goddess Nonsense's choice of a husband from allegorical representatives of theatre and other literary genres. After its rejection by one theatre, Luckless's play is staged at another. The third act becomes a play within a play, in which the characters in the puppet play are portrayed by humans. The Author's Farce ends with a merging of the play's and the puppet show's realities.
The play established Fielding as a popular London playwright, and the press reported that seats were in great demand. Although largely ignored by critics until the 20th century, most agree that the play is primarily a commentary on events in Fielding's life, signalling his transition from older forms of comedy to the new satire of his contemporaries. Fielding's play within a play satirised the way in which the London theatre scene, in his view, abused the literary public by offering new and inferior genres. The Author's Farce is now considered to be a critical success and a highly skilled satire.
## Plot
Most of Fielding's plays were written in five acts, but The Author's Farce was written in three. The opening introduces the main character, Harry Luckless, and his attempts to woo Harriot, the daughter of his landlady Mrs. Moneywood. The play begins in much the same way as Fielding's earlier romance-themed comedies, but quickly becomes a different type of play, mocking the literary and theatrical establishment. Luckless is trying to become a successful writer, but lacks the income that would allow him to concentrate on his writing. Although others try to support him financially, Luckless refuses their help; when his friend, Witmore, pays his rent behind his back, Luckless steals the money from Mrs. Moneywood. In the second act, Luckless seeks assistance to help finish his play, The Pleasures of the Town, but is poorly advised, and the work is rejected by his local theatre. Luckless revises his play and succeeds in finding an alternative venue, leading to the third act, in which the work is performed as a puppet show, with actors taking the place of the puppets.
The third act is dominated by the puppet show, a play within the play. It begins when the Goddess of Nonsense chooses a mate from a series of suitors along the River Styx. All dunces, the suitors include Dr. Orator, Sir Farcical Comic, Mrs. Novel, Bookseller, Poet, Monsieur Pantomime, Don Tragedio and Signior Opera. The goddess eventually chooses a foreign castrato opera singer as her favourite — Signior Opera — after he sings an aria about money. Mrs. Novel then claims that she loved Signior Opera, and died giving birth to his child. At this revelation, the goddess becomes upset, but is quick to forgive. The play within the play is interrupted by Constable and Murdertext, who arrive to arrest Luckless "for abusing Nonsense", but Mrs. Novel persuades Murdertext to let the play finish. Someone from the land of Bantam then arrives to tell Luckless that he is the prince of Bantam. News follows that the King of Bantam has died, and that Luckless is to be made the new king. The play concludes with the revelation that Luckless's landlady is in reality the Queen of "Old Brentford" and that her daughter, Harriot, is now royalty. An epilogue in which four poets discuss how the play should end is brought to a conclusion by a cat, in the form of a woman.
## Themes
Fielding uses Luckless and The Author's Farce to portray aspects of his life, including his experience with the London theatre community. The plot serves as revenge for the Theatre Royal's rejection of Fielding's earlier plays. However, this and his being forced into minor theatres proved beneficial, because it allowed him more freedom to experiment with his plays in ways that would have been unacceptable at larger locations. This experimentation, beginning with The Author's Farce, is an attempt by Fielding to try writing in formats beyond the standard five-act comedy play. Though he returned to writing five-act plays later, many of his plays contain plot structures that differ from those common to contemporary plays. To distinguish his satirical intent, Fielding claims that the work was written by "Scriblerus Secundus," which places his play within an earlier literary tradition. The name refers to the Scriblerus Club, a satirical group whose members included Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot. Fielding's use of the pseudonym connects his play to the satirical writings of the Scriblerus Club's members, and reveals their influence on his new style, such as incorporating in their work the styles of the entertainments that they were ridiculing. Fielding thus allows the audience to believe that he is poking fun at others, less discriminating than themselves, and less able to distinguish good art from bad. Fielding also borrowed characters from the work of the Club's members, such as the Goddess of Nonsense, influenced by Pope's character from The Dunciad, Dulness, who is at war with reason. Nonsense, like Dulness, is a force that promotes the corruption of literature and taste, to which Fielding adds a sexual element. This sexuality is complicated, yet also made comical, when Nonsense chooses a castrated man as her mate. Her choice emphasises a lack of morality, one of the problems that Fielding believed dominated 18th-century British society. Despite the link to Dulness, the general satire of the play more closely resembles Gay's Beggar's Opera than the other works produced by the Scriblerus Club.
The Author's Farce is not a standard comedy; rather, it is a farce, and as such employs petty forms of humour like slapstick. Instead of relying on rhetorical wit, Fielding incorporates dramatic incongruities. For example, actors play puppets in a life-size version of a puppet play. Fielding's purpose in relying on the farce tradition was specifically to criticise society as a whole. Like others, Fielding believed that there was a decline in popular theatre related to the expansion of its audience, therefore he satirises it, its audiences, and its writers throughout The Author's Farce. Speaking of popular entertainment in London, Fielding's character Luckless claims, "If you must write, write nonsense, write operas, write entertainments, write Hurlothrumbos, set up an Oratory and preach nonsense, and you may meet with encouragement enough." Luckless's only ambition is to become successful. Many of the characters in the play believe that the substance of a play matters little as long as it can earn a profit. Harriot believes that the only important characteristic of a lover is his merit, which, to her, is his ability to become financially successful. Fielding later continues this line of attacks on audiences, morality, and genres when he criticises Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Pamela, in which a nobleman makes advances upon a servant-maid with the intent of making her his mistress.
The blending of the fictional and real worlds at the end of the play represents the inability of individuals to distinguish between fictional and real experience. The final act of the play also serves as Fielding's defence of traditional hierarchical views of literature. He satirises new literary genres with low standards by using personified versions of them during the puppet show. In particular, Fielding mocks how contemporary audiences favoured Italian opera, a dramatic form that he regarded with contempt. Fielding considered it "a foreign intruder that has weaned the public from their native entertainments". The character Signior Opera, the image of the favoured castrato singer within the puppet show, is a parody of the foreigners who performed as singers, along with the audiences that accepted them. Additionally, the character serves as a source of humour that targets 18th-century literary genres; after the character Nonsense chooses the castrato Signior Opera as her husband, Mrs Novel objects, declaring that she gave birth to his child. This act would be physically impossible because Opera is a castrato, and it pokes fun at how the genres and the public treated such individuals. Fielding was not alone in using the castrato image for humour and satire; William Hogarth connects the castrato singer with politics and social problems, and many other contemporary works mock women who favour eunuchs.
## Performance history and publication
The Author's Farce and the Pleasures of the Town was written during 1729. The first press announcement of the play appeared on 18 March 1730 in the Daily Post, stating that it was in rehearsal. An advertisement appeared in the same newspaper shortly afterwards mentioning restricted seating and high ticket prices, suggesting that the play was expected to be a popular entertainment. It opened on Easter Monday, 30 March 1730, at the Little Theatre, Haymarket, and shortly thereafter was billed alongside The Cheats of Scapin. The last act was later made into the companion piece to Hurlothrumbo for one show.
Fielding altered and rewrote The Author's Farce for its second run beginning on 21 April 1730, when it shared the bill with his earlier play Tom Thumb. This combination continued through May and June and was later billed for a revival on 3 July 1730. Starting on 1 August 1730, the third act of The Author's Farce was revived by the Little Theatre during the week of the Tottenham Court fair. On 17 October 1730 an advertisement in the Daily Post announced that a new prologue was to be added. A version without the prologue followed before the play's run ended, to be replaced by The Beggar's Wedding by Charles Coffey. The Author's Farce was briefly revived in November 1730 and January 1731, but only the first two acts of the play were shown. It was paired with the afterpiece Damon and Phillida, which was later replaced by The Jealous Taylor in January 1731. Performances continued into February and March 1731. Productions in 1732 included a new prologue, now lost, that had been added for the 10 May 1731 performance.
On 31 March 1731, The Author's Farce was paired with the Tom Thumb remake, The Tragedy of Tragedies, as a replacement for The Letter Writers, the original companion piece. Although both Tragedy of Tragedies and The Author's Farce were main shows, they alternated on the billing until the 18 June 1731 performance, the final showing of any Fielding play in the Little Theatre except for a 12 May 1732 benefit show of The Author's Farce. The last documented non-puppet version was performed on 28 March 1748 by Theophilus Cibber as a two-act companion piece for a benefit show. The Pleasures of the Town act was performed as a one-act play outside London throughout the century, including a 15-show run at Norwich in 1749 and during the 1750s, and a production at York during the 1751–52 theatre season. Additionally, there were benefit shows that included the third act at a variety of locations, including Dublin, on 19 December 1763 and Edinburgh in 1763. There were also many performances of the puppet theatre versions, including a travelling show by Thomas Yeates, titled Punch's Oratory, or The Pleasures of the Town, which started in 1734.
In response to the Actor Rebellion of 1733, Fielding produced a revised version of The Author's Farce, incorporating a new prologue and epilogue. Performed at the Theatre Royal, it was advertised in the Daily Journal, opening with an inferior replacement cast for some of the important characters. It was joined by The Intriguing Chambermaid and The Harlot's Progress. These were the only performances of the revised version, which was printed together with The Intriguing Chambermade (1734) and included a letter by an unknown writer, possibly Fielding himself. The 1734 edition of the play was printed in 1750, and it was used for all later publications until 1966. Printed texts of the play were included in Arthur Murphy's 1762 Works of Henry Fielding and George Saintsbury's 1893 Works of Henry Fielding. The latter includes The Author's Farce along with only two other plays. The 1903 Works of Henry Fielding, edited by G. H. Maynadier, included only the first two acts. Only three scenes were included in Alfred Howard's The Beauties of Fielding, which collected passages from Fielding's works. George Saintsbury included The Author's Farce and two other plays in a Fielding collected edition of 1893, but ignored the others.
## Critical response
The success of The Author's Farce established Fielding as a London playwright; writing in 1998, Harold Pagliaro describes the play as Fielding's "first great success". Catherine Ingrassia, in 2004, attributes its popularity to Fielding's satirical attack on the archetypal woman writer, specifically Haywood. Among contemporary accounts the Daily Post of 2 May 1730 reported that the play received universal approval, and on 6 May that seats were in great demand. The 7 May issue of the Grub Street Journal noted that the play was popular among "Persons of Quality"; many notable figures attended the show, including on the first night John Perceval, 1st Earl of Egmont, and Frederick, Prince of Wales, whose presence was mentioned in the 28 April 1730 London Evening Post and the 15 May 1730 Daily Post. The only surviving comments from any of those who saw the play come from the diary of the Earl of Egmont, who reported that The Author's Farce and Tom Thumb "are a ridicule on poets, several of their works, as also of operas, etc., and the last of our modern tragedians, and are exceedingly full of humour, with some wit."
The play was hardly discussed at all during the 18th century, and the 19th century mostly followed the same trend. A chapter on the play is included in Frederick Lawrence's Life of Fielding (1855), and it is mentioned by Leslie Stephen and Austin Dobson, who focus on what the play says about Grub Street and Fielding. Most later critics agree with Dobson's judgement that the play primarily provides a commentary on events in Fielding's life, and marks his transition from older forms of comedy to the new satire of his contemporaries. Charles Woods, writing in 1966, argues that The Author's Farce was an integral part of Fielding's career, and dismisses a political reading of the work. Some years earlier, in 1918, Wilbur Lucius Cross had held that the play revealed Fielding's talent for writing farces and burlesques. Writing in 1993, Martin and Ruthe Battestin maintain that the play "was [Fielding's] first experiment in the irregular comic modes ... where his true genius as a playwright at last found scope". They further assert that Fielding was the first to offer audiences "a kind of pointed, inventive foolery", and that his talent for "ridicule and brisk dialogue" and for devising "absurd yet expressionistic plots" was unmatched even in 20th-century theatre. Earlier, Frederick Homes Dudden, had described the puppet show in the third act as "a highly original satire on the theatrical and quasi-theatrical amusements of the day." F. W. Bateson included the play in his 1963 list of "satirical extravaganzas".
J. Paul Hunter, in his 1975 comparison of Fielding's theatrical style and form, notes that while "many of the literary and theatrical jibes are witty," the slow pacing and lack of dramatic conflict make the play seem "essentially untheatrical". Pat Rogers disagrees, reasoning that "Few livelier theatrical occasions can ever have been seen than the original runs of The Author's Farce, with their mixture of broad comedy, personal satire, tuneful scenes and rapid action." Robert Hume, in 1988, comments that the literary structure of The Author's Farce is "ramshackle but effective", although he considers that "Fielding's parody of recognition scenes is done with verve" and "the 'realistic' part of the show is a clever combination of the straightforward and the ironic." Writing in 1998, Thomas Lockwood explains various aspects that make the play great, putting particular emphasis on the "musical third act", which he believes "shows a gift for brilliant theatrical arrangement". Lockwood praises the play's conclusion in particular, and the ever-increasing tempo of events following Murdertext's "explosive invasion".
## Cast
### 1730 cast
Play:
Internal puppet show:
### 1734 altered cast
Play:
Internal puppet show:
|
12,525,725 |
Huế chemical attacks
| 1,166,823,922 |
1963 tear gas attack in Vietnam
|
[
"1963 in Vietnam",
"Buddhist crisis",
"Chemical weapons attacks",
"Conflicts in 1963",
"History of Huế"
] |
The Huế chemical attacks occurred on 3 June 1963, when soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) poured liquid chemicals from tear gas grenades onto the heads of praying Buddhists in Huế, South Vietnam. The Buddhists were protesting against religious discrimination by the regime of the Roman Catholic President Ngô Đình Diệm. The attacks caused 67 people to be hospitalised for blistering of the skin and respiratory ailments.
The protests were part of the Buddhist crisis, during which the Buddhist majority in South Vietnam campaigned for religious equality after nine people were killed by government forces while defying a ban that prevented them from flying the Buddhist flag on Vesak. The incident prompted the United States to privately threaten to withdraw support for Diệm's government and when the Americans finally reduced aid a few months later, the army took it as a green light for a coup. An inquiry determined that the chemical used in the attack was a liquid component from old French tear gas grenades that had never functioned properly. The findings exonerated the ARVN soldiers from charges that they had used poison or mustard gas. The outcry over the attack had already forced Diệm to appoint a panel of three cabinet ministers to meet with Buddhist leaders for negotiations regarding religious equality. The talks led to the signing of the Joint Communique, but the policy changes it provided were not implemented and widespread protests continued, leading to the assassination of Diệm in a military coup.
## Background
In a country where demographic surveys estimated the Buddhist majority to be between 70 and 90 percent, President Ngô Đình Diệm's policies generated claims of religious bias. A member of the Roman Catholic minority in Vietnam, he pursued pro-Catholic policies that antagonized many Buddhists. Specifically, historians regard the government as being biased towards Catholics in public service and military promotions, as well as in the allocation of land, business favors, and tax concessions.
Diệm's family also seized businesses belonging to Buddhists in order to enrich themselves. Many officers in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam converted to Catholicism in the belief that their military prospects depended on it. Forgetting that he was talking to a Buddhist, Diệm once told a high-ranking officer, "Put your Catholic officers in sensitive places. They can be trusted." The distribution of firearms to village self-defense militias intended to repel Vietcong guerrillas resulted in weapons only being given to Catholics. Some Catholic priests ran their own private armies, and in some areas, forced conversions, looting, shelling and demolition of Buddhist pagodas occurred. Some Buddhist villages converted en masse to receive aid or avoid being forcibly resettled by Diệm's regime.
The Catholic Church was the largest landowner in the country, and the "private" status that was imposed on Buddhism by the French colonial authorities, which required official permission to conduct public Buddhist activities and restricted the construction of Buddhist temples, was not repealed by Diệm. Furthermore, the land owned by the Catholic Church was exempt from redistribution under land reform programs. Catholics were de facto exempt from the corvée labor that the government obliged all citizens to perform and the government disproportionately allocated funding to Catholic majority villages. Under Diệm, the Roman Catholic Church enjoyed special exemptions in property acquisition, and in 1959, he dedicated the country to the Virgin Mary. The Vatican flag was regularly flown at major public events in South Vietnam.
On 7 May 1963, government officials invoked a rarely enforced 1958 law known as Decree Number 10 to prohibit the display of religious flags, forbidding Buddhists from flying their flag on Vesak, the birthday of Gautama Buddha. The application of the law caused indignation among Buddhists in the lead-up to the most important religious festival of the year, as Catholics had been allowed to display Vatican flags a week earlier at a celebration for Diệm's elder brother, Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục. On 8 May, in Huế, a crowd of Buddhists protested against the ban on the Buddhist flag. The police and army broke up the protest by opening fire and throwing grenades at the demonstrators, leaving nine dead.
Diệm's denial of governmental responsibility for the incident, and instead blaming members of the Viet Cong insurgency, led to growing discontent among the Buddhist majority. The incident spurred a protest movement by Buddhists against the religious discrimination of Diệm's Roman Catholic-dominated regime. The dispute came to be known as the Buddhist crisis, and it provoked widespread and large-scale civil disobedience throughout South Vietnam, persisting throughout May. The objective of the protests was to have Decree Number 10 repealed, and to force the implementation of religious equality. At the time, the United States, the main backer of South Vietnam in the Cold War, had 16,000 military advisers in the country to assist the Army of the Republic of Vietnam in the war against the Vietcong insurgency, which sought to reunify Vietnam under communist rule. Washington wanted the dispute with the Buddhists to be resolved quickly so that it would not dampen public morale and detract from the fight against the Vietcong.
## Incident
On 3 June, Buddhists held another series of protests across the country. In the morning, attention focused on the capital Saigon, where approximately 500 Buddhist laypeople, mostly youths, protested in front of the Government Delegate's office while 300 troops stood by. The crowd and a government official equipped with a loudspeaker exchanged taunts and accusations. When the official claimed that Vietcong were among the crowd and attempting to cause trouble, the troops aimed their firearms at the protestors.
When the crowd responded by taunting the soldiers as "stupid killers", the troops fixed bayonets to their guns and put on gas masks before charging at the protestors and throwing tear gas grenades at them. Some of the demonstrators ran away, while others remained stationary and began praying. Deaths and injuries were averted when a Buddhist leader urged the protestors to either retreat to a pagoda and receive medical treatment for the tear gas or to go home. When the entrance to the pagoda was blocked with barbed wire, some protestors simply sat on the ground and continued praying. After a standoff lasting almost three hours, troops wearing gas masks forcibly dispersed the crowd. The situation was worse in Huế, where Diệm had banned demonstrations and ordered his forces to arrest those who engaged in civil disobedience. At 13:00, some 1,500 protestors attempted to march towards the Từ Đàm Pagoda in Huế for a rally, having gathered at the Bến Ngự Bridge near the Perfume River. A confrontation ensued when the protestors attempted to cross the bridge. Six waves of ARVN tear gas and attack dogs failed to disperse the crowd.
Government officials stood on trucks, using loudspeakers to call out above the noise, urging the Buddhists—primarily high school and university students who had arrived on bicycles—to disperse. The announcements were met by jeers when the government spokesperson blamed the unrest on the Vietcong. At 18:30, the military personnel at the scene dispersed the crowd by emptying vials of brownish-red liquid on the heads of praying protestors, resulting in 67 Buddhists being hospitalized for chemical injuries. Of these, 40 suffered second-degree burns. The symptoms consisted of severe blistering of the skin and respiratory ailments. The crowd responded angrily to the apparent use of poison gas, and the incident became a public relations disaster for Diệm. Demonstrations also happened in Quang Tri and Nha Trang, also on the central coast area.
## Reaction and investigation
By midnight, tensions were high as a curfew and martial law were enacted. Rumors circulated that three people had died, and Newsweek reported that police had lobbed blister gas into the crowd. Reports citing reliable sources claimed that Diệm was planning a military showdown against the Buddhists. The day after the attacks, Diệm installed a new mayor in Da Nang, the largest city in central Vietnam, in a move that was seen as a response to the ongoing protests. Meanwhile, those involved in the protests who had not been taken to hospital retreated into the pagoda and continued to fast. Government authorities responded by placing barbed wire around the compound and cutting off water and electricity. The police prevented anybody from leaving or entering the temple.
US consul John Helble suspected that the ARVN troops had used tear gas, and in a report to the US Embassy, Saigon, he noted that "possibly another type of gas which caused skin blisters" was used. Helble reported that the substance, although unidentified, had raised concerns by the US State Department that poison gas was used because the symptoms were not consistent with standard tear gas.
If this were the case, Helble concluded that the United States should tell Diệm that his regime must condemn the actions of the troops and punish the culprits. If Diệm refused, the United States should threaten to publicly condemn and distance itself from Saigon. With the US also decrying the use of troops against civilian protests, the South Vietnamese government complained that unlike their Saigon counterparts, the Huế police were not trained in riot control. Diệm's authorities requested that the Americans airlift 350 military personnel from Vũng Tàu in the far south to quell the protests in Huế, but the Americans refused. William Trueheart, who was in charge of the US Embassy, Saigon while Ambassador Frederick Nolting was on holiday, confronted Secretary of State Nguyễn Đình Thuần about the allegations of blister gas usage the next day. Thuần appeared to be astounded and asked Trueheart what blister gas was. Trueheart explained that the symptoms of the victims were consistent with those of mustard gas and passed on the US threat to denounce the regime for the chemical attacks. The day after the attacks, there had been press reports that the US Air Force had been used to transport troops of the Airborne Division to Huế, but this was denied two days later by a State Department spokesperson who said that no US aircraft or personnel had been involved in the transport of any Vietnamese servicemen or policemen.
Thuan started an inquiry into the usage of chemical weapons on the protestors. The investigation exonerated the Diệm regime of the most serious allegations of using poison or mustard gas. Before the president was deposed in November, the inquiry's report declared that only tear gas was used, and that the liquid components of the grenades were poured onto the protestors after they had failed to vaporize as they were designed to. A further commission chaired by General Trần Văn Đôn prior to February 1964 concluded that the tear gas was left behind by French colonial forces in the 1950s. The tear gas used came in glass containers in the form of a liquid that was transformed into gaseous vapor upon activation by acid. The injuries were attributed to the acid failing to activate the liquid into gaseous form. United States Army chemists in Maryland confirmed that the tear gas had come from canisters dating back to French World War I stocks. During World War I, France had used tear gas containing a mixture of chloroacetone and ethyl bromoacetate against German troops at Ypres on the Western Front, which was known to strongly irritate mucous membranes.
Chloroacetone turns brown-orange when exposed to light, while ethyl bromoacetate is a yellow liquid at tropical outdoor temperatures. Both have similar colors to the liquid used on the demonstrators. Some varieties of French tear gas contained phosgene oxime or hydrogen cyanide. These two chemicals can be fatal, but none of the protestors in this incident died.
## Repercussions
Diệm responded to the controversy of the chemicals by agreeing to formal talks with the Buddhist leaders. He appointed a three-member Interministerial Committee, which comprised Vice President Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ as chairman, Thuan and Interior Minister Bui Van Luong. The first meeting with Buddhist leaders took place two days after the attacks and one of the issues discussed was the temple siege in Hue, and the cessation of protests if religious equality was implemented. Diệm appeared to soften his line, at least in public, in an address on 7 June when he said that some of the tensions were due to his officials lacking "sufficient comprehension and sensitivity" although there was no direct admission of fault regarding any of the violence in Hue since the start of the Buddhist crisis in May. Despite continuing protests, including public self-immolations by monks such as Thich Quang Duc, a Joint Communique resulting from the discussions was signed in mid-June, which promised to end the Buddhist crisis.
The Joint Communique was not implemented and the situation continued to deteriorate, particularly after the Ngô family ordered South Vietnam's Special Forces to attack Buddhist pagodas across the country on 21 August. The U.S. condemned the raids, and began to cut aid to the Special Forces, which was effectively a private Ngô family army, in addition to other government programs that were closely identified with the ruling clan. Regarding such gestures as a green light, and safe in the knowledge that the US would not intervene in Diệm's defense, the army staged a successful coup in November, resulting in the assassination of the president. The removal of Diệm resulted in a period of political instability, as a series of military juntas deposed one another. This led to a deterioration in the military situation as the communist Vietcong made substantial gains against the ARVN, prompting the US to deploy hundreds of thousands of combat troops in 1965, escalating the Vietnam War.
|
20,754,031 |
The Swimming Hole
| 1,155,941,595 |
Painting by Thomas Eakins of a group of swimmers
|
[
"1885 paintings",
"Bathing in art",
"Nude art",
"Paintings by Thomas Eakins"
] |
The Swimming Hole (also known as Swimming and The Old Swimming Hole) is an 1884–85 painting by the American artist Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), Goodrich catalog \#190, in the collection of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. Executed in oil on canvas, it depicts six men swimming naked in a lake, and is considered a masterpiece of American painting. According to art historian Doreen Bolger it is "perhaps Eakins' most accomplished rendition of the nude figure", and has been called "the most finely designed of all his outdoor pictures". Since the Renaissance, the human body has been considered both the basis of artists' training and the most challenging subject to depict in art, and the nude was the centerpiece of Eakins' teaching program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. For Eakins, this picture was an opportunity to display his mastery of the human form.
In this work, Eakins took advantage of an exception to the generally prudish Victorian attitude to nudity: swimming naked was widely accepted, and for males was seen as normal, even in public spaces. Eakins was the first American artist to portray one of the few occasions in 19th-century life when nudity was on display. The Swimming Hole develops themes raised in his earlier work, in particular his treatment of buttocks and his ambiguous treatment of the human form; in some cases it is uncertain as to whether the forms portrayed are male or female. Such themes had earlier been examined in his The Gross Clinic (1875) and William Rush (1877), and would continue to be explored in his paintings of boxers (Taking the Count, Salutat, and Between Rounds) and wrestlers (Wrestlers).
Although the theme of male bathers was familiar in Western art, having been explored by artists from Michelangelo to Daumier, Eakins' treatment was novel in American art at the time. The Swimming Hole has been "widely cited as a prime example of homoeroticism in American art". In 2008, the art critic Tom Lubbock described Eakins' work as:
> a classic of American painting. It shows a scene of healthy, manly, outdoor activity: a group of young fellows having stripped off for a dip. It is based on the swimming excursions that were enjoyed by the artist and his students. Eakins himself appears in the water at bottom right—in signature position, so to speak."
## Title and composition
Eakins referred to the painting as Swimming in 1885, and as The Swimmers in 1886. The title The Swimming Hole dates from 1917 (the year after Eakins died), when the work was so described by the artist's widow, Susan Macdowell Eakins. Four years later, she titled the work The Old Swimming Hole, in reference to the 1882 poem The Old Swimmin'-Hole; by James Whitcomb Riley. The Amon Carter Museum has since returned to Eakins' original title, Swimming.
The painting shows Eakins and five friends or students bathing at Dove Lake, an artificial lake in Mill Creek outside Philadelphia. Each of the men is looking at the water, in the words of Martin A. Berger, "apparently lost in a contemplative moment". Eakins' precise rendering of the figures has enabled scholars to identify all those depicted in the work. They are (from left to right): Talcott Williams (1849–1928), Benjamin Fox (c. 1865 – c. 1900), J. Laurie Wallace (1864–1953), Jesse Godley (1862–1889), Harry the dog (Eakins' Irish Setter, c. 1880–90), George Reynolds (c. 1839–89), and Eakins himself. The rocky promontory on which several of the men rest is the foundation of the Mill Creek mill, which was razed in 1873. It is the only sign of civilization in the work—no shoes, clothes, or bath houses are visible. The foliage in the background provides a dark background against which the swimmers' skin tones contrast.
`The composition is pyramidal. The figure reclining at left leads the viewer's eye to the seated figure, whose gesture in turn points to Godley at the apex of the compositional pyramid. The diving figure at right leads to the swimming form of Eakins, who painted himself into the scene and whose leftward movement directs attention back into the painting. Eakins enforces this pyramidal structure by manipulating the focus of the painting: the center area containing the swimmers is extremely precise, while the outer areas are diffuse, with "virtually no moderating zones in between". The lighting within the picture is unnatural—too bright in some places, and too dark in others—although the effect, which tends to accentuate the body lines of the swimmers, is generally subtle.`
The composition is notable for both its adherence to academic tradition (the mastery of the figure as an end in itself), and its uniqueness in transposing the male nude to an outdoor setting. The depiction of someone diving into water was very rare in the history of Western art. The other figures are artfully arranged to imply a continuous narrative of movement, the poses progressing "from reclining to sitting to standing to diving"; at the same time, each figure is carefully positioned so that no genitalia are visible. As in his previous works, Eakins chose to include a self-portrait, here as the swimmer at bottom-right. Unlike his appearances in The Gross Clinic or Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, here the artist's presence is more ambiguous—he may be seen as companion, teacher, or voyeur. The ripple in the water next to Eakins, and the bubbles around the diver, are the only indications of movement in a painting where motion is otherwise arrested; the water next to the red-headed figure in the lake is still enough to offer a clear reflection. This contrast underscores the tension in the picture between classical prototypes and scientific naturalism.
The positioning of the bodies and their musculature refers to classical ideals of physical beauty and masculine camaraderie evocative of Greek art. The reclining figure is a paraphrase of the Dying Gaul, and is juxtaposed with the far less formal self-depiction by the artist. It is possible that Eakins was seeking to reconcile an ancient theme with a modern interpretation; the subject was contemporary, but the poses of some of the figures recall those of classical sculpture. One possible influence by a contemporary source was Scène d'été, painted in 1869 by Frédéric Bazille (1841–70). It is not unlikely that Eakins saw the painting at the Salon while studying in Paris, and would have been sympathetic to its depiction of male bathers in a modern setting.
In Eakins' oeuvre, The Swimming Hole was immediately preceded by a number of similar works on the Arcadian theme. These correspond to lectures he gave on Ancient Greek sculpture and were inspired by the Pennsylvania Academy's casts of Phidias' Pan-Athenaic procession from the Parthenon marbles. A series of photographs, relief sculptures, and oil sketches culminated in the 1883 Arcadia, a painting that also featured nude figures—posed for by a student, a nephew, and the artist's fiancée—in a pastoral landscape.
## Studies
Eakins made several on-site oil sketches and photographic studies before painting The Swimming Hole. It is unknown whether the photographs were taken before the oil sketches were produced or vice versa (or, indeed, whether they were created on the same day).
By the early 1880s, Eakins was using photography to explore sequential movement and as a reference for painting. Some time in 1883 or 1884, he photographed his students engaged in outdoor activities. Four photographs of his students swimming naked in Dove Lake have survived, and bear a clear relationship to The Swimming Hole. The swimmers are seen in the same spot and from the same vantage point, although their positions are entirely different from those in the painting. None of the photographs closely matches the poses depicted in the painting; this was unusual for Eakins, who typically adhered closely to his photographic studies. "The divergence between these sets of images may hint at lost or destroyed pictures, or it may tell us that the photographs came first, before Eakins' mental image had crystallized, and before the execution of his first oil sketch. The poses in the photographs are more spontaneous, while those of the painting are deliberately composed with a classical "severity". Although no photographic studies have survived that would suggest a more direct connection between the photographs and the painting, recent scholarship has proposed that marks incised onto the canvas and later covered by paint indicate that Eakins made use of light-projected photographs.
Eakins combined his studies into a final oil sketch in 1884, which became the basis for the finished painting. The basic composition remained unchanged, as all six men and the dog appeared in the sketch; however, Eakins, who usually adhered closely to his sketches when developing a final work, made several uncharacteristic alterations to the specific movements and positions of the figures. A friend and student, Charles Bregler, described the process:
> ... For a picture ... like the Swimming Hole, a small sketch was made 8 x 10 inches [20 x 25 cm], then separate studies of the landscape and figures, to get the true tone and color, etc. The diving figure being the most difficult to paint, was first modelled in wax. This gave him a thorough knowledge of every form.
## Commission and reception
The painting was commissioned in 1884 by Edward Hornor Coates, a Philadelphia businessman who chaired the Committee on Instruction at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Eakins taught. Coates intended to pay Eakins \$800 (\$ in dollars), which at the time was the largest commission Eakins had been offered.
Coates intended the painting for an exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and it was shown at the academy's exhibition in the fall of 1885. However, Coates rejected it as unrepresentative of Eakins' oeuvre. In a November 27, 1885 letter to Eakins, Coates reasoned:
> as you will recall one of my chief ideas was to have from you a picture which might some day become part of the Academy collection. The present canvas is to me admirable in many ways but I am inclined to believe that some of the pictures you have are even more representative, and it has been suggested would be perhaps more acceptable for the purpose which I have always had in view. You must not suppose from this that I depreciate the present work—such is not the case.
It is not known precisely why Coates failed to purchase the painting; however, it seems likely that Coates felt the work was too controversial to acquire. Coates, as Head of Instruction at Eakins' academy, would have been familiar with the subject matter of Eakins' works, and thus it seems unlikely that the nudity in the painting would have surprised or shocked him. Rather, it seems certain that Coates would have recognized the majority of men in the painting, as all but one were students of Eakins at the academy. He was undoubtedly familiar with the site depicted in the painting too, as it was only a half a mile (800 m) from Haverford College, where Coates studied as an undergraduate. The depiction of a professor and his students together in the nude would have been a sensitive subject for the academy's directors, who had forbidden Eakins from using Academy students as models, as modeling was considered indecent. Coates chose to exchange The Swimming Hole for the "less controversial genre scene" of Eakins' The Pathetic Song—today housed in the Corcoran Gallery of Art— and paid Eakins the \$800 he had offered for the original commission.
On February 9, 1886, Eakins was forced to resign from the academy because of his removal of a loincloth from a male model in a class where female students were present. In a letter to Coates on February 15 in which Eakins explained his reasons for resigning, he addressed the issue of nudity in his artwork:
> My figures at least are not a bunch of clothes with a head and hands sticking out but more nearly resemble the strong living bodies that most pictures show. And in the latter end of a life so spent in study, you at least can imagine that painting is with me a very serious study. That I have but little patience with the false modesty which is the greatest enemy to all figure painting. I see no impropriety in looking at the most beautiful of Nature's works, the naked figure. If there is impropriety, then just where does such impropriety begin? Is it wrong to look at a picture of a naked figure or at a statue? English ladies of the last generation thought so and avoided the statue galleries, but do so no longer. Or is it a question of sex? Should men make only the statues of men to be looked at by men, while the statues of women should be made by women to be looked at by women only? Should the he-painters draw the horses and bulls, and the she-painters like Rosa Bonheur the mares and cows? Must the poor old male body in the dissecting room be mutilated before Miss Prudery can dabble in his guts? ... Such indignities anger me. Can not anyone see into what contemptible inconsistencies such follies all lead? And how dangerous they are? My conscience is clear, and my suffering is past.
## Provenance
Following its rejection by Coates, the painting remained in Eakins' possession until his death. It was exhibited just twice more during Eakins' lifetime: at the 1886 Southern Exposition in Louisville, Kentucky, and in 1887 at Chicago's Inter-State Industrial Exposition, and ignored by critics on both occasions. The painting then disappears from the historical record—there is no further reference to the painting in any records from Eakins or his circle of friends during Eakins' lifetime. Following Eakins' death, the painting was exhibited in Philadelphia and New York at memorial exhibitions in 1917.
In 1925, The Swimming Hole was purchased from the artist's widow by the community of Fort Worth, Texas for \$750 (\$ in dollars). Thereafter it was in the collection of the Fort Worth Art Association, the institutional predecessor of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and was displayed in the city's public library. In 1990, the museum announced it intended to sell the painting to build an endowment for the purchase of contemporary art. A public outcry ensued, prompting the museum to search for a local buyer. Eventually, after tumultuous negotiations, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art agreed to purchase The Swimming Hole for \$10 million (\$ in dollars).
## Restorations
Before its purchase by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, The Swimming Hole appears to have undergone seven different conservatory treatments. It may have been restored prior to its inclusion in Eakins' memorial exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1917. A photograph from that time reveals cracks in the glazes and a drip mark, possibly caused by the splash of a caustic liquid. After the painting was acquired by the Fort Worth Art Association, it was often lent out for exhibitions and was damaged as a result. In 1937 it was relined by a private gallery in New York City and the drip was painted out. In 1944 it was relined and restored and in 1947 it was restored again, both times by a private New York dealer. The Brooklyn Museum performed two minor restorations in 1954 and 1957. Although it continued to travel frequently, The Swimming Hole received no comprehensive treatment until 1993.
Following its purchase by the Amon Carter, in June 1993, Claire M. Barry and staff from the Amon Carter and the Kimbell Art Museums began a major restoration of the painting. According to Barry, "The restoration revealed relatively little significant damage or deterioration not previously visible. Several layers of discolored varnish and overpaint were removed, exposing a rich and varied surface with brushwork ranging from the controlled, almost miniaturistic strokes forming the figures to the freer treatment of the landscape elements."
Much effort went into distinguishing the original glazes from those added during subsequent restorations. Previous retouches were removed and a natural resin varnish was applied. The painting's original frame, long missing, was located in 1992. It too was cleaned, restored, and reinstalled to the painting.
During the restoration, it was discovered that a long-standing ascription of the painting's date to 1883 was the result of a misinterpretation: the artist's original inscription of 1885 was painted in a fugitive red-lake pigment that had faded, and was mistakenly repainted by a conservator to the earlier date.
## Interpretation
The Swimming Hole represented the full range of Eakins' techniques and academic principles. He used life study, photography, wax studies, and landscape sketches to produce a work that manifested his interest in the human form. Lloyd Goodrich (1897–1987) believed the work was "Eakins' most masterful use of the nude", with the solidly conceived figures perfectly integrated into the landscape, an image of subtle tonal construction and one of the artist's "richest pieces of painting". Another biographer, William Innes Homer (1929-2012), was more reserved and described the poses of the figures as rigidly academic. Homer found inconsistencies in paint quality and atmospheric effect, and wrote that the painting was unsuccessful in reconciling antique and naturalistic ideals. For him, "it is as though these nudes had been abruptly transplanted from the studio into nature".
Before the mid-19th century, the subject of the nude male figure in Western art had long been reserved for classical subject matter. In the 19th century, it was not unusual for boys and men to swim without clothing in public, but there was no precedent for this subject in American painting. Although there was an informal convention for multiple-figure compositions featuring female nudes, in America such paintings were exhibited in saloons rather than galleries; Eakins altered the gender and presented the subject as fine art. Viewed in a broader context, The Swimming Hole has been cited as one of the few 19th-century American paintings that "engages directly with a newly emerging European tradition"—that of the male bather. Eakins' picture, although not as stylistically progressive as the works of his French contemporaries, parallels the novel thematic direction taken by Bazille in Summer Scene, Georges Seurat (1859–91) (Bathers at Asnières, 1884) and Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) in his numerous explorations of the subject.
Eakins' work influenced the subsequent generation of American realists, particularly the artists of the Ashcan School. George Bellows' (1882–1925) Forty-two Kids, painted in 1907, bears obvious similarity to The Swimming Hole, although Bellows' painting has been interpreted as a parody of the Eakins, and the many naked children of the title are playing in the urban Hudson River of New York City rather than in a rural setting. In a sentiment that reflected Eakins' philosophy, Bellows later explained his motivation for painting Forty-two Kids: "Prizefighters and swimmers are the only types whose muscular action can be painted in the nude legitimately."
Eakins' widow's retitling of the picture after his death reinforced the popular association with the nostalgic sentiment of Riley's poem. More recently, the painting's subject has been compared to the poem "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman (1819–92), particularly the section "Twenty-Eight Young Men Bathe by the Shore", given the shared interest in the imagery of men bathing in the nude. Whitman may have provided inspiration: the celebration of nudity, which in Whitman's case was an open expression of his homosexuality, informs the art of both men. In 1895, one of Eakins' male students reminisced about "us Whitman fellows", which has been interpreted as a reference to homosexuality. "But for their marital status, however, virtually nothing concrete is known of the private realms or sexual propensities of any of the men depicted (in The Swimming Hole), with the exception of Eakins."
Although the painting has been viewed as a platonic vision of the male nude seen unselfconsciously in a natural setting, by the 1970s some American writers were beginning to see Eakins' work, and specifically The Swimming Hole, as having homoerotic implications. Critics have paid particular attention to the compositional prominence of the standing figure's buttocks, which has been interpreted as suggestive of "homoerotic interests". According to Jonathan Weinberg, The Swimming Hole marked the beginning of homoerotic imagery in American art. Eakins left a record simultaneously provocative and ambiguous on matters of sex. On the basis of the same visual evidence, that of the photographs, oil sketches, and the finished painting of swimmers, art historians have drawn markedly varying conclusions as to the artist's intent.
## See also
- List of works by Thomas Eakins
- Heroic nudity
- August Blue, Henry Scott Tuke (1893–94)
|
238,811 |
Battle of the Trebia
| 1,170,071,953 |
First major battle of the Second Punic War
|
[
"210s BC conflicts",
"218 BC",
"Battles in Emilia-Romagna",
"Battles involving the Roman Republic",
"Battles of the Second Punic War"
] |
The Battle of the Trebia (or Trebbia) was the first major battle of the Second Punic War, fought between the Carthaginian forces of Hannibal and a Roman army under Sempronius Longus on 22 or 23 December 218 BC. Each army had a strength of about 40,000 men; the Carthaginians were stronger in cavalry, the Romans in infantry. The battle took place on the flood plain of the west bank of the lower Trebia River, not far from the settlement of Placentia (modern Piacenza), and resulted in a heavy defeat for the Romans.
War broke out between Carthage and Rome in 218 BC. The leading Carthaginian general, Hannibal, responded by leading a large army out of Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal), through Gaul, across the Alps and into Cisalpine Gaul (in northern Italy). The Romans went on the attack against the reduced force which had survived the rigours of the march and Publius Scipio personally led the cavalry and light infantry of the army he commanded against the Carthaginian cavalry at the Battle of Ticinus. The Romans were soundly beaten and Scipio was wounded. The Romans retreated to near Placentia, fortified their camp and awaited reinforcement. The Roman army in Sicily under Sempronius was redeployed to the north and joined with Scipio's force. After a day of heavy skirmishing in which the Romans gained the upper hand, Sempronius was eager for a battle.
Hannibal used his Numidian cavalry to lure the Romans out of their camp and onto ground of his choosing. Fresh Carthaginian cavalry routed the outnumbered Roman cavalry and Carthaginian light infantry outflanked the Roman infantry. A previously hidden Carthaginian force attacked the Roman infantry in the rear. Most of the Roman units then collapsed and most Romans were killed or captured by the Carthaginians, but 10,000 under Sempronius maintained formation and fought their way out to the safety of Placentia. Recognising the Carthaginians as the dominant force in Cisalpine Gaul, Gallic recruits flocked to them and their army grew to 60,000. The following spring it moved south into Roman Italy and gained another victory at the Battle of Lake Trasimene. In 216 BC Hannibal moved to southern Italy and inflicted the disastrous defeat of the Battle of Cannae on the Romans, the last of what modern historians describe as the three great military calamities suffered by the Romans in the first three years of the war.
## Background
### Pre-war
The First Punic War was fought from 264 to 241 BC between Carthage and Rome: these two main powers of the western Mediterranean in the 3rd century BC struggled for supremacy primarily on the Mediterranean island of Sicily and its surrounding waters and in North Africa. The war lasted for 23 years until the Carthaginians were defeated. Five years later an army commanded by the leading Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca landed in Carthaginian Iberia (modern south-east Spain) which he greatly expanded and turned into a quasi-monarchical, autonomous territory ruled by his family, the Barcids. This expansion gained Carthage silver mines, agricultural wealth, manpower, military facilities such as shipyards and territorial depth, which encouraged it to resist future Roman demands.
Hamilcar ruled Carthaginian Iberia autonomously until his death in 228 BC. He was succeeded by his son-in-law, Hasdrubal and in 221 BC by his son Hannibal. In 226 BC the Ebro Treaty established the Ebro River as the northern boundary of the Carthaginian sphere of influence in Iberia. A little later Rome made a separate treaty of association with the independent city of Saguntum (modern Sagunto), well south of the Ebro. In 219 BC a Carthaginian army under Hannibal besieged, captured and sacked Saguntum, which led Rome to declare war on Carthage.
### War in Cisalpine Gaul
It was the long-standing Roman procedure to elect two men each year as senior magistrates, known as consuls, who in time of war would each lead an army. In 218 BC the Romans raised an army to campaign in Iberia under the consul Publius Scipio, who was accompanied by his brother Gnaeus. The major Gallic tribes in the area of north Italy either side of the River Po known as Cisalpine Gaul were antagonised by the settling of Roman colonists at Piacentia (modern Piacenza) and Cremona earlier that year on traditionally Gallic territory. They rose and attacked the Romans, capturing several towns. They repeatedly ambushed a Roman relief force and blockaded it in Tannetum. The Roman Senate detached one Roman and one allied legion from the force intended for Iberia to send to the region. The Scipios had to raise fresh troops to replace these and thus could not set out for Iberia until September.
### Carthage invades Italy
Meanwhile, Hannibal assembled a Carthaginian army in the Iberian city of New Carthage (modern Cartagena) in late 219 and early 218 BC. This marched north in May 218 BC, entering Gaul to the east of the Pyrenees, then taking an inland route to avoid Roman allies along the coast. Hannibal left his brother Hasdrubal Barca in charge of Carthaginian interests in Iberia. The Roman fleet carrying the Scipio brothers' army landed at Rome's ally Massalia (modern Marseille) at the mouth of the River Rhone in September, at about the same time as Hannibal was fighting his way across the river against a force of local Allobroges at the Battle of Rhone Crossing. A Roman cavalry patrol scattered a force of Carthaginian cavalry, but Hannibal's main army evaded the Romans and Gnaeus Scipio continued to Iberia with the Roman force; Publius returned to Italy. The Carthaginians crossed the Alps with 38,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry in October, surmounting the difficulties of climate, terrain and the guerrilla tactics of the native tribes.
Hannibal arrived with 20,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry and about 30 war elephants from the force with which he had left Iberia in what is now Piedmont, northern Italy. The Romans had already withdrawn to their winter quarters and were astonished by Hannibal's appearance. The Carthaginians needed to obtain supplies of food, as they had exhausted theirs during their journey. They also wanted to obtain allies among the north-Italian Gallic tribes from which they could recruit, to build up their army to a size which would enable it to effectively take on the Romans. The local tribe, the Taurini, were unwelcoming, so Hannibal promptly besieged their capital (near the site of modern Turin), stormed it, massacred the population and seized the supplies there. With these brutal actions Hannibal was sending out a clear message to the other Gallic tribes as to the likely consequences of non-cooperation.
Hearing that Publius Scipio was operating in the region, Hannibal assumed the Roman army in Massalia, which he had believed en route to Iberia, had returned to Italy and reinforced the army already based in the north. Believing that he would therefore be facing a much larger Roman force than he had anticipated, Hannibal felt an even more pressing need to recruit strongly among the Cisalpine Gauls. He determined that a display of confidence was called for and advanced boldly down the valley of the Po. However, Scipio led his army equally boldly against the Carthaginians, causing the Gauls to remain neutral. Both commanders attempted to inspire the ardour of their men for the coming battle by making fiery speeches to their assembled armies. Hannibal is reported to have stressed to his troops that they had to win, whatever the cost, as there was no place they could retreat to.
### First contact
After camping at Placentia the Romans constructed a pontoon bridge across the lower River Ticinus and continued west. With his scouts reporting the nearby presence of Carthaginians, Scipio ordered his army to encamp. The Carthaginians did the same. Next day each commander led out a strong force to personally reconnoitre the size and make-up of the opposing army, things of which they would have been almost completely ignorant. Scipio mixed a large force of velites (javelin-armed light infantry) with his main cavalry force, anticipating a large-scale skirmish. Hannibal put his close-order cavalry in the centre of his line, with his light Numidian cavalry on the wings.
On sighting the Roman infantry the Carthaginian centre immediately charged and the javelin-men fled back through the ranks of their cavalry. A large mêlée ensued, and many cavalry dismounted to fight on foot and many of the Roman javelin-men reinforcing the fighting line. This continued indecisively until the Numidian cavalry swept round both ends of the line of battle and attacked the still disorganised velites, the small Roman cavalry reserve to which Scipio had attached himself, and the rear of the already engaged Roman cavalry, throwing them all into confusion and panic. The Romans broke and fled, with heavy casualties. Scipio was wounded and only saved from death or capture by his 16-year-old son, also named Publius Cornelius Scipio. That night Scipio broke camp and retreated over the Ticinus; the Carthaginians captured 600 of his rearguard the next day.
The Romans withdrew as far as Placentia. Two days after this clash the Carthaginians crossed the River Po and marched towards Placentia. They formed up outside the Roman camp and offered battle, which Scipio refused. The Carthaginians set up their own camp some 8 kilometres (5 mi) away. That night 2,200 Gallic troops serving with the Roman army attacked the Romans closest to them in their tents and deserted to the Carthaginians, taking the Romans' heads with them as a sign of good faith. Hannibal rewarded them and sent them back to their homes to enrol more recruits. Hannibal also made his first formal treaty with a Gallic tribe and supplies and recruits started to come in. The Romans abandoned their camp and withdrew under cover of night. The next morning the Carthaginian cavalry bungled their pursuit and the Romans were able to set up camp on an area of high ground by the River Trebia at what is now Rivergaro, a little south west of Placentia. Even so, they had to abandon much of their baggage and heavier gear and many stragglers were killed or captured. Scipio waited for reinforcements while Hannibal camped at a distance on the plain on the other side of the river, gathering supplies and training the Gauls now flocking to his standard.
## Prelude
Rome's other consul, Sempronius Longus, had been assembling an army in western Sicily, with which it was planned to invade Africa the following year. Shocked by Hannibal's arrival and Scipio's setback, the Senate ordered this army to move north to assist Scipio. It probably covered part of the distance by sea as it arrived at Ariminum (modern Rimini) only 40 days later. Sempronius's army then marched to join Scipio's on the Trebia and set up camp alongside it. As Scipio was still partly incapacitated by his wounds Sempronius took overall command. Meanwhile, Hannibal bribed a force of Roman allies from Brundisium (modern Brindisi) garrisoning a large grain depot at Clastidium (modern Casteggio), 40 kilometres (25 mi) to the west, into surrendering the place. This resolved any remaining Carthaginian logistical difficulties.
During the Punic Wars formal battles were usually preceded by the two armies camping two to twelve kilometres (1–8 miles) apart for days or weeks; sometimes forming up in battle order each day. During these periods when armies were encamped in close proximity it was common for their light forces to skirmish with each other, attempting to gather information on each other's forces and achieve minor, morale-raising victories. These were typically fluid affairs and viewed as preliminaries to any subsequent battle. In such circumstances either commander could prevent a battle from occurring; unless both commanders were to at least some degree willing to give battle, either side might march off without engaging. Forming up in battle order was a complicated and premeditated affair, which took several hours. Infantry were usually positioned in the centre of the battle line, with light infantry skirmishers to their front and cavalry on each flank. Many battles were decided when one side's infantry force was partially or wholly enveloped and attacked in the flank or rear. In 218 BC the two armies established camps about 8 kilometres (5 mi) from each other on opposite sides of the River Trebia. The Romans' was on an easily defended low hill to the east of the Trebia and the Carthaginians' was on high ground to the west.
While waiting to see what Sempronius would do, Hannibal came to believe some of the Gauls in the immediate area were communicating with the Romans. He sent a force of 3,000 men, partly composed of Gauls, to devastate the area and plunder their settlements. Sempronius sent a force of cavalry – large, but of unknown size – supported by 1,000 velites to challenge them. As they were dispersed between a large number of settlements and many were burdened with plunder and looted food, the Carthaginians were easily routed and fled back to their camp. The Romans pursued, but were in turn thrown back by the Carthaginian reserve force on duty at the camp. Roman reinforcements were called in, eventually amounting to all 4,000 of their cavalry and 6,000 light infantry. How many Carthaginians were involved is unclear, but a large, fast-moving conflict sprawled across the plain. Hannibal was concerned that it would develop into a full-scale battle in a manner which he would not be able to control, so he recalled his troops and took personal command of reforming them immediately outside his camp. This brought the fighting to an end, as the Romans were unwilling to attack uphill against an enemy who would be supported by missile fire from within their camp. The Romans withdrew, claiming the victory: they had inflicted more casualties and the Carthaginians had abandoned the field of battle to them.
Hannibal had deliberately brought the battle to a close, but Sempronius interpreted events as the Roman cavalry having dominated the Carthaginians. Sempronius was eager for a full-scale battle: he wished it to take place before Scipio fully recovered and so would be able to share the glory of an anticipated victory. He was also aware that he would be superseded in his position in less than three months, when the new consuls would take up their positions. Hannibal was also ready for a set-piece battle: he wished his new Gallic allies to participate in a victory before boredom and winter weather provoked desertions; and was possibly concerned by the recent suspected Gallic treachery in the immediate area. He also preferred to fight a battle on the flat and open floodplain of the Trebia, where the manoeuvrability of his cavalry could be used to greatest effect, to the hillier ground away from the river where the Roman heavy infantry would have found it easier to dominate. From the enthusiastic way in which Sempronius had reinforced his cavalry, Hannibal felt confident that he could provoke a battle at a time and place of his choosing.
## Opposing forces
### Roman
Most male Roman citizens were liable for military service and would serve as infantry, with a better-off minority providing a cavalry component. Traditionally, when at war the Romans would raise two legions, each of 4,200 infantry and 300 cavalry. Approximately 1,200 of the infantry – poorer or younger men unable to afford the armour and equipment of a standard legionary – served as javelin-armed skirmishers known as velites; they each carried several javelins, which would be thrown from a distance, a short sword and a 90-centimetre (3 ft) circular shield. The balance were equipped as heavy infantry, with body armour, a large shield and short thrusting swords. They were divided into three ranks, of which the front rank, known as hastati, also carried two javelins; while the second and third ranks, known as principes and triarii respectively, had a thrusting spear instead. Both legionary sub-units and individual legionaries fought in relatively open order.
A consular army was usually formed by combining a Roman legion with a similarly sized and equipped legion provided by their Latin allies; allied legions usually had a larger attached complement of cavalry than Roman ones. In 218 BC each consul was leading a larger army of four legions, two Roman and two provided by its allies, for a total of approximately 20,000 men.
The combined force which Sempronius led into battle included four Roman legions. At full strength these should have mustered 16,800 men, including 4,800 velites; at least one of the legions is known to have been significantly understrength. The near-contemporary Greek historian Polybius gives a total of 16,000 Romans, the Roman historian Livy, writing 200 years later, gives 18,000. In addition there were approximately 20,000 allied infantry, comprising four Latin allied legions and a strong force of Gauls. Mention is made of 6,000 light infantry and it is unclear whether these are included in the 36,000, or 38,000, infantry or in addition to them. As the nominal total number of velites from eight legions is 9,600, and it is known that many were lost at the Battle of the Ticinus, most modern historians assume that the 6,000 are included within the total number of infantry given. There were also 4,000 cavalry, a mixture of Romans, Latin allies and Gauls.
### Carthaginian
Carthaginian citizens only served in their army if there was a direct threat to the city of Carthage. In most circumstances Carthage recruited foreigners to make up its army. Many were from North Africa and these were frequently referred to as "Libyans". The region provided several types of fighters, including: close-order infantry equipped with large shields, helmets, short swords and long thrusting spears; javelin-armed light infantry skirmishers; close-order shock cavalry (also known as "heavy cavalry") carrying spears; and light cavalry skirmishers who threw javelins from a distance and avoided close combat; the latter were usually Numidians. The close-order African infantry fought in a tightly packed formation known as a phalanx. On occasion some of the infantry would wear captured Roman armour, especially among Hannibal's troops.
In addition both Iberia and Gaul provided many experienced infantry and cavalry. The close-order or "heavy" infantry from these areas were unarmoured troops who would charge ferociously, but had a reputation for breaking off if a combat was protracted. The Gallic cavalry, and possibly some of the Iberians, wore armour and fought as close-order troops; most or all of the mounted Iberians were light cavalry. Slingers were frequently recruited from the Balearic Islands. The Carthaginians also employed war elephants; North Africa had indigenous elephants at the time. The sources are not clear as to whether they carried towers containing fighting men.
Hannibal had arrived in Italy with 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry. At Trebia this had grown to 29,000 infantry – 21,000 close-order and 8,000 light infantry – and 11,000 cavalry. In each case they would be a combination of Africans, Iberians and Gauls; the proportions are not known, other than that 8,000 of the close-order infantry were Gauls. In addition there were about 30 elephants, the survivors of the 37 with which he had left Iberia.
## Battle
### Early stages
The terrain between the Carthaginian camp and the Trebia was a unwooded flood plain, where it was apparently impossible to stage an ambush. Hannibal had his younger brother Mago take 1,000 cavalry and 1,000 infantry during the night to the south of where he intended to fight the battle and secrete themselves in an old watercourse full of brush.
The next morning, either 22 or 23 December, was cold and snowy. Shortly before daybreak Hannibal sent his Numidian cavalry across the river to force back the Roman pickets and provoke a fight. Meanwhile, the rest of his army ate an early breakfast and prepared for battle. When the Numidians appeared Sempronius ordered out all of his cavalry to chase them off. Polybius writes "the Numidians easily scattered and retreated, but afterwards wheeled round and attacked with great daring—these being their peculiar tactics." The confrontation broke down into a wheeling mass of cavalry, but with the Numidians refusing to withdraw, Sempronius promptly ordered out first his 6,000 velites and then his whole army; he was so eager to give battle that few, if any, of the Romans had eaten breakfast. The Numidians withdrew slowly and Sempronius pushed his whole army after them, in three columns, each 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) long, through the icy waters of the Trebia, which was running chest-high. The Romans were met by the Carthaginian light infantry; behind them the entire Carthaginian army was forming up for battle. The Romans also organised themselves in battle formation and advanced.
The cavalry of both sides fell back to their positions on the wings. The large number of light infantry in each army – entirely javelin-men for the Romans, a mixture of javelin-men and slingers from the Balearics for the Carthaginians – skirmished between the main armies. The Roman velites had used many of their javelins against the Carthaginian cavalry, while the Carthaginian skirmishers were fully supplied, and the slingers among the Carthaginians outranged the velites by some distance. As opposed to their opponents, the velites were unfed, and also tired and cold from having forded the Trebia. For these reasons the Carthaginians got the better of the initial skirmishing and drove the velites back through the gaps in their supporting heavy infantry. The Carthaginian light infantry then moved towards the flanks of their army and harassed the Roman cavalry with their missiles, before finally falling back behind their own cavalry as the gap between the armies closed.
### Formations
The Carthaginian army formed up symmetrically: the 8,000 Gallic infantry were in the centre; on each side of them was a formation of 6,000 African and Iberian veteran infantry; on the far side of each of these were half of the surviving elephants; and on each wing were 5,000 cavalry. The Romans too formed up symmetrically: the Roman heavy infantry were in the centre, perhaps 13,000 strong; on each side of them were part of their allied force, some 17,000 in total – this included a force of still-loyal Cisalpine Gauls, but the sources are unclear as to how many or where they were positioned. The survivors of the 6,000 velites were regrouping to their rear. Like the Carthaginians, the Romans divided their 4,000 cavalry between their wings.
### Engagement
The Romans had a total of approximately 30,000 heavy infantry to the Carthaginians' 20,000 and could expect sooner or later to overwhelm their opponents by weight of numbers. The Carthaginian line was also in danger of being outflanked by the stronger Roman force; to guard against this Hannibal thinned the Carthaginian line, especially that of the Gauls in the centre, to be able to lengthen it to match the Romans'. Also, with tactical forethought typical of him, he had positioned the elephants on either side of the infantry, which discouraged the Roman infantry from approaching their flanks too closely.
On each wing 5,000 Carthaginian and 2,000 Roman cavalry charged each other. The Roman cavalry were not only outnumbered, but their horses were tired from chasing the Numidian cavalry and many had been wounded by the missiles of the Carthaginian light infantry. Both encounters ended rapidly, the Romans fleeing back over the Trebia and most of the Carthaginian cavalry pursuing them. Goldsworthy describes the fight put up by the Roman cavalry as "feeble", and the military historian Philip Sabin says that the two contests were "speedily decided". The Carthaginian light infantry, who had withdrawn to the wings behind the cavalry, moved forward and round the now exposed Roman flanks. The Roman light infantry, who had withdrawn to the rear of Roman heavy infantry, turned to face this developing Carthaginian threat. Many of the Roman allied heavy infantry on each flank also turned to their flanks to face this new threat, which inevitably took much of the impetus out of their parent formation's push against the African and Iberian infantry to their fronts.
At the same time, unnoticed in the heat of battle, Mago's force of 2,000 had been making its way down the watercourse, onto the plain and into a position where they could attack the Romans' left rear. While all this was happening, the fighting between the two heavy infantry contingents had continued fiercely, the more numerous and better armoured Romans getting the better of it; despite being weakened by many of their component units having to turn to the flank or rear. Mago's force charged into the velites who were already fending off the Carthaginian light infantry, but their formation held. Some of the rear rank of the legions, the triarii, turned to assist the velites. Increasing numbers of Carthaginian cavalry broke off their pursuit, returned and attacked the Roman rear. Eventually the strain told and the units of Latin allies and Gauls on the flanks and the velites to the rear started to break up.
Meanwhile, the Roman infantry in the centre routed the 8,000 Gauls facing them, as well as a unit of African heavy infantry, and broke clean through the centre of the Carthaginian army. By the time they halted their pursuit and reorganised it was clear the rest of their army behind them had dissolved and that the battle was lost. Sempronius, who was fighting with the Roman infantry, ordered them away from the site of the battle and, maintaining their formation, 10,000 of them re-crossed the Trebia and reached the nearby Roman-held settlement of Placentia without interference from the Carthaginians. The Carthaginians concentrated on pursuing and cutting down the partially surrounded balance of the Roman army.
### Casualties
There is debate among modern historians as to the Roman losses. Dexter Hoyos states that the only Roman survivors were the infantry who broke through the Carthaginian centre. Richard Miles says that "many" not in this group were killed; Nigel Bagnall writes that only a minority of the Roman cavalry survived. Goldsworthy states that the Romans "suffered heavily", but that "numbers of soldiers" straggled into Placentia or one of their camps in addition to the formed group of 10,000; John Lazenby argues that outside of the 10,000, "few" infantry escaped, although "most" of the cavalry did, as does Leonard Cottrell. According to Paul Erdkamp, the Romans lost 20,000 killed during the battle, half of their force; this excludes those captured.
Carthaginian losses are generally agreed to have been several thousand of the Gallic infantry in the centre, a smaller number of their other infantry and of their cavalry; and several elephants. Many of the African infantry were re-equipped with captured Roman armour and weapons.
## Aftermath
As was usual at the time, the Romans had left a strong guard at their camps. On hearing the news of the defeat the wounded Scipio gathered them together and marched to Placentia, where he joined Sempronius. When news of the defeat reached Rome it initially caused panic. But this calmed once Sempronius arrived, to preside over the consular elections in the usual manner. Gnaeus Servilius Geminus and Gaius Flaminius were selected and Sempronius then returned to Placentia to see out his term to 15 March. The Carthaginian cavalry isolated both Placentia and Cremona, but these could be supplied by boat up the Po. The consuls-elect recruited further legions, both Roman and from Rome's Latin allies; reinforced Sardinia and Sicily against the possibility of Carthaginian raids or invasion; placed garrisons at Tarentum and other places for similar reasons; built a fleet of 60 quinqueremes (large galleys); and established supply depots at Ariminum and Arretium (modern Arezzo) in Etruria in preparation for marching north later in the year. Two armies – of four legions each, two Roman and two allied, but with stronger than usual cavalry contingents – were formed. One was stationed at Arretium and one on the Adriatic coast; they would be able to block Hannibal's possible advance into central Italy and be well positioned to move north to operate in Cisalpine Gaul.
According to Polybius, the Carthaginians were now recognised as the dominant force in Cisalpine Gaul and most of the Gallic tribes sent plentiful supplies and recruits to his camp. Livy, however, claims the Carthaginians suffered from a shortage of food throughout the winter. In Polybius's account there were only minor operations during the winter and most of the surviving Romans were evacuated down the Po and assigned to one of the two new armies being formed; the flow of Gallic support for the Carthaginians became a flood and their army grew to 60,000. Livy details dramatic accounts of winter confrontations, but Goldsworthy describes these as "probably an invention".
## Subsequent campaigns
In spring 217 BC, probably early May, the Carthaginians crossed the Apennine Mountains unopposed, taking a difficult but unguarded route. Hannibal attempted without success to draw the main Roman army under Gaius Flaminius into a pitched battle by devastating the area. The Carthaginians then flanked Flaminius, cutting his supply line to Rome, which provoked him into a hasty pursuit without proper reconnaissance. That the Carthaginians continued to lay waste to farms and villages on their line of march probably spurred Flaminius and his men in their pursuit. Hannibal set an ambush and in the Battle of Lake Trasimene surprised and completely defeated the Romans, killing Flaminius and another 15,000 Romans and taking 15,000 prisoner. A cavalry force of 4,000 from the other Roman army was also engaged and wiped out.
The Roman prisoners were treated badly, but the captured Roman allies were treated well. Many were soon freed and sent back to their cities, in the hope that they would speak well of Carthaginian martial prowess and of their treatment. Hannibal hoped some of these allies could be persuaded to defect and marched south in the hope of winning over some of the ethnic Greek and Italic city states. There, the following year, Hannibal won a victory at Cannae which Richard Miles describes as "Rome's greatest military disaster". The historian Toni Ñaco del Hoyo describes the Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae as the three "great military calamities" suffered by the Romans in the first three years of the war. Subsequently the Carthaginians campaigned in southern Italy for a further 13 years.
In 204 BC Publius Cornelius Scipio, the son of the Scipio who had been wounded at Ticinus, invaded the Carthaginian homeland and defeated the Carthaginians in two major battles and won the allegiance of the Numidian kingdoms of North Africa. Hannibal and the remnants of his army were recalled from Italy to confront him. They met at the Battle of Zama in October 202 BC where Hannibal was decisively defeated. As a consequence Carthage agreed a peace treaty which stripped it of most of its territory and power.
## Notes, citations and sources
|
58,684,856 |
Allison Guyot
| 1,173,659,551 |
Seamount in the Pacific Ocean
|
[
"Albian",
"Cretaceous volcanoes",
"Former islands",
"Guyots",
"Volcanoes of the Pacific Ocean"
] |
Allison Guyot (formerly known as Navoceano Guyot) is a tablemount (guyot) in the underwater Mid-Pacific Mountains of the Pacific Ocean. It is a trapezoidal flat mountain rising 1,500 metres above the seafloor to a depth of less than 1,500 m, with a summit platform 35 by 70 kilometres wide. The Mid-Pacific Mountains lie west of Hawaii and northeast of the Marshall Islands, but at the time of their formation were located in the Southern Hemisphere.
The tablemount was probably formed by a hotspot in the present-day Southern Pacific before plate tectonics moved it to its current location. Several hotspots, including the Easter, Marquesas and Society hotspots, may have been involved in the formation of the Mid-Pacific Mountains. Volcanic activity is dated to have occurred circa 111–85 million years ago and formed a volcanic island. Subsequently, carbonate deposition commenced as Allison Guyot subsided and eventually buried the island, forming an atoll-like structure and a carbonate platform. Among other animals, crocodilians lived on Allison Guyot.
The platform emerged above sea level during the Albian and Turonian ages. It drowned about 99 ± 2 million years ago for unknown reasons; possibly a phase of renewed emergence damaged the reefs, or it was located in unfavourable waters. Later, pelagic sedimentation commenced on the seamount and led to the deposition of sediments including limestone, ooze and sand, which bear traces of climatic events and ocean currents.
## Name and research history
Allison Guyot is named after E.C. Allison, an oceanographer and paleontologist at the San Diego State College; formerly it was named "Navoceano Guyot". The name "Hamilton Guyot" has also been applied to Allison Guyot but is not correct; Hamilton Guyot is a separate formation in the Mid-Pacific Mountains. The seamount is the source of the Ocean Drilling Program drill core 865A, which was bored into the summit platform of Allison Guyot in 1992 but did not reach the volcanic structure of the underwater mountain. Two other cores 865C and 865B were obtained during the same operation; Allison Guyot is Site 865 Ocean Drilling Program. These drill cores were part of a larger project to investigate and clarify the history of the flat-topped submarine mountains in the Pacific Ocean.
## Geography and geology
### Local setting
Allison Guyot is located in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, part of the western Mid-Pacific Mountains. The Mid-Pacific Mountains contain seamounts which were covered by limestones during the Barremian and Albian (circa 129.4 – circa 125 million years ago and circa 113–100.5 million years ago, respectively). Hawaii lies due east and the Marshall Islands southwest; Resolution Guyot is 716 kilometres northwest.
The guyot (also known as tablemount) has an outline resembling a trapezoid and consists of two connected volcanic ridges facing north-northwest to east-northeast. Its western parts may be a distinct volcano. The surface platform has dimensions of 35 by 70 kilometres, with an upwards-doming form 0.3–0.5 kilometres high, and is covered by large sediment mounds; the rim surrounding the platform lies at a depth of about 1,650 metres and there is evidence of former reefs. The structure appears to consist of lagoonal sediments surrounded by a reef, and the shallowest point of Allison Guyot lies at less than 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) depth below sea level. Volcanic cones dot the eastern side of the summit plateau. The seamount bears traces of slumping, which on the southeastern side of Allison Guyot has removed part of the platform perimeter.
The seamount rises 1.5 kilometres above the seafloor. Underneath Allison Guyot, the seafloor is about 130–119 million years old, and a 128-million year-old magnetic lineation is located nearby. The Molokai Fracture Zone forms a ridge which passes close to Allison Guyot and intersects with another ridge at the seamount. Tectonically the seamount is part of the Pacific Plate.
### Regional setting
The west central and south central Pacific Ocean seafloor contains many guyots of the Mesozoic age that developed in seas shallower than typical of the present-day ocean. These are submarine mountains which are characterised by a flat top and usually the presence of carbonate platforms that rose above the sea surface during the middle Cretaceous period. Many of these seamounts were formerly atolls, though there are some differences to present-day reef systems. All these structures originally formed as volcanoes in the Mesozoic ocean. The crust underneath these volcanoes tends to subside as it cools, and thus the islands and seamounts sink. Fringing reefs may have developed on the volcanoes, which then became barrier reefs as the volcanoes subside and turn into atolls; these rims surround lagoons or tidal flats. Continued subsidence offset by growth of the reefs led to the formation of thick carbonate platforms. Sometimes volcanic activity continued after the formation of the atoll or atoll-like structure, and during episodes where the platforms rose above sea level erosional features such as channels and blue holes developed. Eventually, these platforms drowned for reasons that are often unclear.
The formation of many such seamounts has been explained with the hotspot theory, which describes the formation of chains of volcanoes that get progressively older along the length of the chain, with an active volcano only at one end of the system. This volcano lies on a spot of the lithosphere heated from below; as the plate moves the volcano is moved away from the heat source and volcanic activity ceases, producing a chain of volcanoes that become older away from the currently active one.
The "South Pacific Superswell" is a region in the Southern Pacific at the present-day Austral Islands, Cook Islands and Society Islands, where intense volcanic activity was underway during the Cretaceous, and is where the Cretaceous seamounts of the Mid-Pacific Mountains originated. The Easter hotspot, Marquesas hotspot and the Society hotspot may have been involved in the formation of the Mid-Pacific Mountains. After the Mountains had formed, plate tectonics shifted them northwards to their present-day position. Allison Guyot appears to have formed in the same region.
### Composition
One drill core on Allison Guyot has found a 136-metre-thick layer of pelagic sediments, under which are 735-metre-thick limestones that formed in lagoons and might continue down for almost 600 metres. The limestone consists mostly of calcite with little dolomite and occurs in the form of bafflestone, grainstone, packstone, peloid, rudstone and wackestone; ooliths have also been found. The carbonates are of biogenic origin, and fossils of dasyclads, echinoderms, gastropods, green algae, molluscs, ostracods, oysters, red algae, rudists and sponges occur within the limestones; some of the fossils have partially dissolved and are thus poorly preserved. Remnants of crocodilians have been found within Aptian–Albian mudstones, together with fossils of fish and unidentified vertebrates. The limestone is partly altered by karstification and phosphatisation, and manganese has accumulated in the upper layers.
Basalts occur in the form of cobbles and sills within the limestones. These basalts define an alkali basalt suite and contain clinopyroxene, feldspar, ilmenite, plagioclase, pyroxene, spinel and titanomagnetite. They probably also contained olivine but the basaltic rocks sampled are so heavily altered that no olivine is left. The basalts are typical of intraplate volcanism and their geochemistry shows evidence that fractional crystallisation and mixing between different magmas were involved in their genesis. The component minerals have often been completely altered to calcite, clays, gypsum, hematite, quartz and other, unidentified minerals, either when exposed above sea level or through hydrothermal fluids when the sills formed. The formation of the sills led to the hardening and hydrothermal alteration of the surrounding sediments.
Clays are found both within the limestones and in layers between the carbonates. They consist of berthierine, chlorite, feldspar, hydromica, illite, kaolinite, mica, quartz, serpentine, smectite and possible zeolite. The clays were in part derived from lateritic soils that developed on the volcanic island before they were completely buried in carbonates, and in part formed in settings with limited water exchange during lagoonal stages. Dolomite, gypsum and pyrite co-occur with some clays, and claystones have been found in some places. Mudstones with evidence of animal burrows and containing amber, glauconite, organic material including plant debris and pyrite have also been encountered; pyrite indicates that anoxic environments existed on Allison Guyot.
Black shale and coal form layers in one drill core. The lower limestones contain substantial amounts of organic material that originated from terrestrial settings, and remnants of animal burrows and plant roots have been found in many layers of the platform. The clays and mudstones are rich in organic material. Most of this organic material appears to come from plants but some material has been attributed to algae. Cells and tracheids can be found in the plant remnants.
## Geological history
Radiometric dating has been performed on some of the volcanic rocks. Potassium–argon dating on the sills has yielded ages of 102 ± 6 million years ago and 87 ± 3 million years ago, while argon–argon dating also on the sills produced ages of 111.1 ± 2.6 million years, 111.2 ± 1.2 million years ago and 104.8 ± 0.8 million years ago. Other ages from the sills are about 110.7 ± 1.2 million years ago and 104.9 ± 2.0 million years ago. Rocks dredged from the slopes of Allison Guyot have yielded ages of 101.2 ± 0.8 million years, 102.7 ± 2.7 million years and 85.6 ± 1.3 million years ago. Overall, the volcano is considered to be at least 111 million years old and volcanic activity probably spanned 30–25 million years and several stages.
Both the sills and the dredged rocks were probably erupted after the main shield stage and they may constitute a late stage of secondary volcanism; two or three separate stages might have taken place, including one which formed a secondary cone on the eastern side of Allison Guyot. This may indicate that the seamount passed over more than one hotspot. The volcano of Allison Guyot was apparently already partially eroded when the secondary volcanism took place. Paleomagnetic data taken from limestones show that Allison Guyot developed in the Southern Hemisphere, at a latitude of about 11.2° ± 2.0° south.
### Emergent phase
Allison Guyot began as a volcanic island with a relief of perhaps 1.3 kilometres. Located in equatorial waters suited to the deposition of carbonate platforms, limestone platform grew on the guyot as it rapidly subsided during the Albian. Eventually, the seamount became an atoll. Volcanic rocks cropped out for some time before they were buried into the carbonates, and weathering products of the volcanic rocks accumulated in the limestones. The islands were covered by vegetation, and vegetation cover decreased over time as the volcanic edifice sank. The climate was probably humid and runoff was intense.
The platform contains lagoon and swamp environments, with water depths not exceeding 10 metres, and at some stage contained sand shoals and islands formed by storms as well. The interior was not protected from the sea and the sector of the platform that was investigated by drill cores apparently became increasingly accessible to it over time. The inner platform had a quiet muddy water setting; generally Allison Guyot at that time resembled the present-day Bikini and Eniwetok atolls in terms of morphology when Allison Guyot was emergent.
The carbonate deposits indicate sea level changes following orbital cycles consistent with Milankovitch forcing; parts of the platform occasionally rose above sea level. At some point, karst environments existed on Allison Guyot and are probably the reason for the irregular surface of the summit platform and the presence of sinkholes; there are clear indications of about 200 metres of emergence.
Bivalves including rudists, corals, echinoderms, foraminifera, green algae, hydrozoans, red algae and sponges have been found in the platform's deposits. Rudists were at that time important reef builders and together with sponges colonised the margin of the platform. Among the rudist species discovered on Allison Guyot is Requienia cf. migliorinii. Teeth of crocodilians have been found on the seamount. Its 110 million years old remnants are the oldest known crocodilians in the region of the Pacific Ocean. They indicate that such species lived within the lagoon of Allison Guyot and may give clues about the history of Pacific animals and their dispersal.
### 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. Carbonate sedimentation on Allison Guyot ended during late Albian times, about 99 ± 2 million years ago, at the same time as at Resolution Guyot. By Turonian times (93.9 – 89.8 ± 0.3 million years ago), pelagic sedimentation was prevailing on Allison Guyot. On both Allison and Resolution Guyots, the drowning was preceded by an episode where the platform rose above the sea; possibly it was this emergence and the following submergence which terminated carbonate deposition and prevented it from beginning again. Such emergence and drowning has been recorded at carbonate platforms of that age around the world and may be the consequence of tectonic events across the Pacific Ocean, culminating in the uplift of a part thereof. At that time, a last phase of volcanic activity on Allison Guyot generated several cones on its eastern part. The evidence for this theory is not conclusive, and another theory holds that the drowning of Allison Guyot occurred when it moved through equatorial waters, where upwelling increased the amount of nutrients available, hampering the growth of platforms. The waters might also have been too hot to support the survival of reef builders, as happens in present-day coral bleaching events.
About 160 metres of pelagic sediment in the form of sand, ooze and pelagic limestone accumulated on Allison Guyot; pelagic limestone is of Turonian to Campanian (83.6 ± 0.2 − 72.1 ± 0.2 million years ago) age while the oozes and sands were deposited starting in the early Paleocene (66–56 million years ago). In drill cores, the ooze has a sandy, watery habitus owing to the prevalence of fossil foraminifera in the sediment. The pelagic sediments have been bioturbated in some places and modified by sea currents, which have formed the large mound of pelagic sediment. In drill cores, the ooze overlies Cretaceous shallow-water limestones, which were modified by phosphatisation and manganese accumulation. As plate tectonics moved Allison Guyot northward, its surrounding water masses changed, as did the properties of the pelagic cap. Slumping of the platform occurred during the Cenozoic (the last 66 million years).
The pelagic ooze bears evidence of the Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum, including temporary dissolution of carbonates, changes in the isotope ratios of carbon in sediments on Allison Guyot and changes in foraminifera and ostracod fossils found in the ooze. The latter underwent a major extinction during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum on the seamount and took a long time to recover.
Sea currents have altered the pelagic deposits by removing smaller particles. In particular deposits from warmer periods have been altered in this way on Allison Guyot, perhaps because warmer climates increased hurricane activity and thus the energy available in sea currents or deep-sea circulations shifted. Furthermore, pauses in the sedimentation or episodes of slowdown have been identified.
|
3,647,906 |
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
| 1,173,098,491 |
1996 video game
|
[
"1996 video games",
"Astraware games",
"Baphomet",
"Broken Sword games",
"Classic Mac OS games",
"Games commercially released with DOSBox",
"Knights Templar in popular culture",
"Linux games",
"MacOS games",
"Palm OS games",
"PlayStation (console) games",
"Point-and-click adventure games",
"ScummVM-supported games",
"Single-player video games",
"Sony Interactive Entertainment games",
"THQ games",
"Video games about cults",
"Video games developed in the United Kingdom",
"Video games set in Ireland",
"Video games set in Paris",
"Video games set in Scotland",
"Video games set in Spain",
"Video games set in Syria",
"Virgin Interactive games",
"Virtual Theatre engine games",
"Windows Mobile games",
"Windows games"
] |
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (also known as Circle of Blood in the United States) is a 1996 point-and-click adventure game, and the first in the Broken Sword series, co-written and directed by Charles Cecil, and developed by Revolution Software. The player assumes the role of George Stobbart (voiced by Rolf Saxon), an American tourist in Paris, as he attempts to unravel a deep conspiracy involving a sinister cult and a hidden treasure, seeing him travel to various locations around Europe and the Middle East. The game's storyline was conceived to feature a serious tone and heavily influenced by research on Knights Templar by Cecil, but was also interlaced with humor and graphics in the style of classic animated films.
Development of the game saw considerable work to achieve its presentation. Artwork was conceived by Eoghan Cahill and Neil Breen, who particularly drew the backgrounds in pencil and digitally colored them in Photoshop, the game's design was handled by Tony Warriner and David Sykes, while the game's musical score was composed by Barrington Pheloung. The game was built with Revolution's Virtual Theatre engine, which had already been used by the company in two previous games, Lure of the Temptress and Beneath a Steel Sky.
Broken Sword proved a critical and commercial success following its release on 30 September 1996. Critics lauded praise on the game's story, puzzles, voice acting, writing, gameplay, and music, leading to it receiving numerous award nominations and wins. Sales of the games bested expectations by the company, with around one million units having been sold by 2001. The game has topped several listings of the best adventures games, with many developers citing Broken Sword as an influence in future adventure games.
After its initial release on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, and PlayStation between 1996 and 1998, the game was released on the Game Boy Advance under the same title, and later received ports to Palm OS and Windows Mobile in 2006. The game spawned a number of sequels that would collectively form the Broken Sword series: Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror in 1997; Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon in 2003; Broken Sword: The Angel of Death in 2006; and Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse in episodic format, between 2013 and 2014. An extended version of the game, Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars – Director's Cut, was released between 2009 and 2012 for Wii, Nintendo DS, Microsoft Windows, OS X, iOS, Android and Linux. A remaster of the game was announced at Gamescom 2023, titled Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Reforged. It is based on the original version, not the Directors Cut.
## Gameplay
Broken Sword is a 2D adventure game played from a third-person perspective. The player uses a point-and-click interface to interact with the environment and to guide protagonist George Stobbart through the game's world. To solve puzzles and progress in the game, the player collects items that may be combined with one another, used on the environment, or given to non-player characters (NPCs). The protagonist converses with NPCs via dialogue trees presented through "conversation icons" to learn about the game's puzzles and plot. Clues and other information are obtained by clicking on items in the inventory and on objects in the environment. The player navigates with a map, to which new locations are added as the story unfolds. Unlike in most adventure games at the time, the protagonist's death is possible, after which the player starts from the last save point.
## Plot
While on holiday in Paris, American tourist George Stobbart witnesses an assassin dressed as a clown steal an old man's briefcase from inside a café and kill him with a bomb. George then meets and teams up with photo-journalist Nicole Collard; she was supposed to meet the old man, Plantard, and is investigating a string of assassinations involving the same person in different costumes. George tracks the assassin to a hotel within the city, thanks to clues they left behind near the café, and recovers an ancient manuscript from the hotel safe that the assassin, known as Khan, had taken from the old man. George smuggles the document around a pair of thugs that are after it as well. George and Nicole discover it to be related to the Knights Templar and housing clues relating to places across Europe and the Middle East.
Discovering a tripod mentioned in the manuscript being housed in a local museum, George visits the site from where it came from at Lochmarne, Ireland. He learns that the archaeologist who found it, Peagram, had disappeared, leaving a package in the care of his assistant. The assistant is abducted by Khan outside a local pub, dropping the package. George tracks it down; it contains a gem mentioned in the manuscript. At the excavation site, he locates a mural pointing him to the Montfauçon in Paris. In Paris, George investigates a hospitalised man named Marquet who wanted the gem, and learns the tripod is to be stolen, moments before Marquet is murdered. George and Nicole thwart the theft, and hold on to the tripod.
George finds a hidden chamber beneath Montfauçon, within the city's sewers. He spies on a group there claiming to be successors of the Templars and plotting their rise, Marquet's killer among them; Marquet (who they say "was a liability"), Peagram and Plantard are revealed as Neo-Templars as well. After they leave, George investigates the chamber, discovers through the gem and tripod another clue pointing to the village of Marib in Syria, and travels there. George discovers a nearby rock formation called the Bull's Head detailed in the manuscript. He uncovers in a hidden cave a glass lens that the Neo-Templars sought, an idol of the being called Baphomet, and a stone map of Britain. Khan, who had been seeking George, arrives and corners him, but George outwits the assassin and escapes.
Back at Nicole's, George learns from her that a friend, André Lobineau, uncovered his next destination: a villa in Spain owned by the De Vasconcellos family. With permission from its sole surviving member, George examines the grounds and the family mausoleum and uncovers the family's chalice, hidden centuries ago. Returning to Paris, George tracks down the tomb of a De Vasconcellos ancestor at the Montfauçon – where also the lens reveals in a stained glass window a burning Templar and the date 1314 – and investigates an excavation site that had uncovered another idol of Baphomet, using the chalice to find another clue depicting a church with a square tower. George investigates the grounds in Spain further and finds a hidden well based on biblical references taken from the tomb. Within, he discovers a mural depicting a river running across a chessboard.
George and Nicole compile their clues with the help of André, and learn that the Neo-Templars are travelling to a site under the ruins of a church in Bannockburn, Scotland. The pair takes the night train to get there, only for the Neo-Templars to abduct Nicole. An old lady from their carriage is revealed as a disguised Khan, who helps George to overcome the kidnappers and rescue Nicole. Before dying from his wounds, Khan, implicated to belong to the Hashshashin sect opposing the Templars, explains that he and George were on the same side. The pair arrives to the church, where they discover the Neo-Templars seek to acquire the power of Baphomet and reforge his sword, the titular Broken Sword. To stop them, George and Nicole destroy the site with explosives acquired from Khan, burying the Neo-Templars and destroying the ruins above. When the explosion is finished, they kiss.
## Development
In 1992, Cecil and Noirin Carmody met with Sean Brennan, then-head of publishing at Virgin Interactive, and spoke about how the Knights Templar would make an ideal subject to base a game on. Later, Virgin agreed to issue the game. In a September interview for French magazine Génération 4 at the time, Charles Cecil stated that he had begun working on a scenario for Revolution's third game, after 1992's Lure of the Temptress and 1994's then-upcoming Beneath a Steel Sky. The game would be set in Paris with a Templar story line. The following month, Cecil visited Paris to research the Templars; after reading The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, he was certain there was enough known about the Templars to make them a good subject for a game. Cecil, Dave Cummins, and Jonathan Howard began work on the story and design. Cecil and Cummins attended a film-writing course and their script was read by Alan Drury, a senior BBC scriptwriter and dramatist. Revolution artist Steve Ince created initial location sketches for the game before working on Beneath a Steel Sky. He was promoted to producer halfway through the project.
Despite releasing the PC version, Virgin was not interested in publishing the game on the PlayStation, feeling that only 3D games would sell for the console. As a result, Cecil contacted Sony Computer Entertainment, who agreed to release the game for the console. In North America, Broken Sword was renamed to Circle of Blood. Cecil was uneasy about the name change, feeling that it gave a wrong impression of what type of game it was. In 1998 however, THQ published the game on the PlayStation platform under its original Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars title.
One of Cecil's goals was to depart from the humorous adventure games more popular at the time, such as LucasArts' Monkey Island series, by creating a game with good pacing and a complex storyline, a reason he thought the Knights Templar would be an ideal subject. Unlike LucasArts games, which used a question-and-answer conversation system, Broken Sword offered "conversation icons" that would not reveal to the player what the protagonist was about to say; Cecil's intention was to make the game more cinematic, but not resemble interactive movies of that time; he felt that they were "mimicking movies." He wanted to create two protagonists who would exchange ideas, helping drive the game along. He made George American and Nico French to appeal to US and European markets.
The team at Revolution had high expectations for Broken Sword, but there was significant competition. Revolution had a team that had created successful adventure games, but believed they needed to utilise the best of other creative industries. Eoghan Cahill and Neil Breen of Dublin's Don Bluth studios drew the backgrounds in pencil and digitally colored them in Photoshop. The introductory sequence and the main characters were done by animator Mike Burgess, who worked for the Red Rover animation studio. The game's graphics were animated in a style resembling classic animated films.
Cecil contacted composer Barrington Pheloung, who agreed to create the game's score. Around the time of the game's release, Pheloung stated: "Virgin would probably have been happy with a main theme and a few cues, but I thought that rather than creating an orchestral score like for a movie, I could make one which interacted with the game. So I've written over three hours of music, which is unique in the genre, and over 400 cues." He scored the music for orchestra and added the structural elements by breaking it up into sampled pieces.
Revolution had already cast Hazel Ellerby as Nicole Collard, but had trouble finding a voice actor for George Stobbart. Hazel, who went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, suggested her former schoolmate from Guildhall, Rolf Saxon, as George. Charles offered him the job, and Saxon accepted. The remaining credited voice actors in the original are Rachel Atkins, David Bannerman, Rosy Clayton, Jack Elliott, Steve Hodson, David Holt, Peter Kenny, Richard Mapletoft, Matthew Marsh, Colin McFarlane, Don McCorkindale, Gavin Muir, Paul Panting, and Andrew Wincott.
Cecil was the game's director and writer, Tony Warriner and David Sykes the designer-programmers, and Noirin Carmody the executive producer. The game uses the Virtual Theatre engine, as do Lure of the Temptress and Beneath a Steel Sky. The game's final cost was one million pounds. It received a Game Boy Advance port in 2002, and it was later ported to Palm OS and Windows Mobile in 2006.
In March 2009, Ubisoft released a director's cut of The Shadow of the Templars entitled Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars – Director's Cut for the Wii and Nintendo DS. Dave Gibbons, with whom Revolution worked on Beneath a Steel Sky, created additional artwork for the game. Due to the platform's size limits, the DS version contains no spoken dialogue, only subtitles. A version of the Director's Cut for iPhone and iPod Touch was released on January 20, 2010. In May, a version in high definition was released for the iPad. Versions for Windows and Mac OS X were released on September 2 on digital-distribution services. An Android version was released on Google Play in June 2012. The original version of the game is available from Sold-Out Software and GOG.com with Director's Cut purchases, and from Steam as free DLC for Director's Cut owners.
## Reception
### Sales
Broken Sword was a commercial success, and marked the first time that Revolution Software received royalty payments on a game. By August 2000, it had achieved sales of 825,000 copies, of which 480,000 were sold at full price. It was particularly a hit on the PlayStation, despite low sales expectations. Tony Warriner noted in 2004 that the publisher anticipated "60,000 copies and it went on to do nearly 300,000". As of April 2001, combined sales of Broken Sword's computer and PlayStation releases had surpassed one million units, according to Revolution Software. In 2015, Charles Cecil stated that the PlayStation release alone accounted for 500,000 sales. Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars – Director's Cut also sold well – particularly the iOS version, which, along with The Smoking Mirror's remastered edition, was downloaded by over four million people in 2011. According to Cecil, the remake's sales were higher than those of The Sleeping Dragon and The Angel of Death.
### Critical reviews
Broken Sword was acclaimed by critics, who praised the game's story, art direction, musical score, voice acting, and writing. Edge stated that Broken Sword was superior to LucasArts' adventure games, such as Monkey Island and The Dig, and believed it to be an "adventure gaming milestone" and the "best graphic adventure to date."
Adventure Gamers' Angella Mooney commented that the game's "deep and mysterious plot is designed to be thought-provoking and highly entertaining at the same time." GameSpot's Rebecca B. Anderson found that the game's combination of real history and "highly-creative" storytelling "add[s] spice to an already-entertaining adventure." Joe Antol of Adventure Classic Gaming wrote that the involvement of the Knights Templar generated a "unique experience of creative storytelling." A writer for Next Generation magazine stated that the story is "rich in mystery and intrigue, with plenty of puzzles and locations to explore". Edge's reviewer praised the game's use of "legend and modern-day intrigue", and believed that "Revolution Software finally escaped the shadow of Monkey Island et al. and [have] taken the graphic adventure to new levels in terms of both story and spectacle." The writer commented that, by weaving its "trans-European plot around the legends of the Knights Templar", the game "succeeds in appearing weighty and complex without ever losing its sense of place".
Mark Wolf of PC Gamer US called the game "visually stunning", praising the animated graphics as "crisp and clear" and the artwork as "simply beautiful". He also wrote, "At the highest setting, the background and foreground scroll separately, delivering a sense of depth you don't see in many graphic adventures. Even the atmosphere of each of the areas you explore fit the locale." Mooney called the animation "extremely colorful and well-executed" and noted that the art team "have taken this style of animation and really made an elegant, mature game with it." The writer also noted that the environments are "detailed and inviting". Anderson called the game a "visual treat" and a "work of art," noting that "every scene is filled with rich, lush, illustrative detail that rivals any animated feature film." Next Generation called the character movements "fantastic" and the cutscenes "a joy to watch." The writer for Edge praised its art direction, in which "every visual element is polished to the 'nth' degree". The reviewer believed that "the SVGA artwork by far exceeds the competition in this genre."
Edge complimented its musical score for "play[ing] a large part in mood enhancement", noting that "it's beautifully orchestrated and adds immeasurable atmosphere." Mooney also praised the score, calling it "ambitious and beautiful" and saying it adds a very "cinematic feel" to the experience. Mooney said that the game's voice acting is "of supreme quality" with "delightful dialogue", but noted that long conversations might "turn some players off". Wolf was more critical of the voice acting, calling it "not too professional" and "the worst thing in the game".
Next Generation reviewed the Macintosh version of the game, and stated that "despite the ambitious storyline and animation [...] we might have felt grateful for a month's delay, given the poor quality of the port." They cited the difficult installation which causes conflicts with standard extensions and the slow speed even on high-end computers.
Mooney stated that the game's puzzles are well integrated into the plot and are moderately challenging. Wolf called the puzzles inventive and challenging, but believed that some require "too much pixel-hunting". Next Generation said that almost all of the puzzles are simplistic, requiring no more than to find an object and use it on something else. Despite acclaiming the Windows version, GameSpot deemed the PlayStation version mediocre, criticizing technical deficiencies, such as lengthy load times and muddy graphics. Electronic Gaming Monthly's four reviewers acknowledged that the frequent load times are annoying but were highly positive about the PlayStation conversion, gushing over the beautifully animated cutscenes that blend seamlessly with the game, its support for the PlayStation Mouse, and most especially the story, with its "complex and twisting plot", quirky humor, and compelling characters. Cecil later cited the PlayStation version as his "one big regret" regarding the game. He believed that the team should have introduced direct control over the player character in this version, instead of mouse-driven point-and-click interaction.
### Awards and nominations
Génération 4 awarded it "Best Adventure 1997", and it received the award for "Best Quest" from the magazine Quest. The BBC magazine program Live & Kicking awarded it "Best PC Game of 1996". The game was nominated for Computer Gaming World's 1996 "Adventure Game of the Year" award, which ultimately went to The Pandora Directive. It was also a finalist for the Computer Game Developers Conference's 1996 "Best Adventure Game/RPG" Spotlight Award, but lost the prize to The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall.
The Director's Cut was nominated for the "Best Story" award at the 2009 British Academy Video Games Awards, and Pocket Gamer awarded the DS version the "Pocket Gamer Silver" award in 2009 and the iPhone version the "Pocket Gamer Gold Award" in 2010. The Wii and DS versions were nominated for the "Best Port/Updated Re-release" award at Adventure Gamers' 2010 Aggie Awards. The iPhone version was nominated for the "Best Adventure/RPG Game" award at the 2011 Pocket Gamer Awards. The Wii version won the award for "Best European Adventure" at the 2011 European Games Awards.
## Legacy
### Listings
Adventure Gamers ranked Broken Sword fourth on its lists of "Top 20 Adventure Games of All-Time" in 2004 and "Top 100 All-Time Adventures" in 2011. In 2006, Adventure Classic Gaming put the game in third place on its list of the "Top 10 retro graphic adventure games of all time from PC to consoles". It was listed on Bright Hub's "Best Windows Mobile Games Software" in 2008. In 2010, Retro Gamer placed it in second on its list of the "Top 20 Adventure Games of All-Time ... not by LucasArts", and was included in Universe Publishing's 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die, a book by video game designer and programmer Peter Molyneux and longtime Edge editor Tony Mott published in 2010. NowGamer listed it on its 2011 feature, "Greatest Point-And-Click Games (Not By LucasArts)". In 2012, it ranked eighth on GamesRadar's "Best point-and-click adventure games". Broken Sword and its remake are listed on Adventure Gamers' "Top Adventure Games" recommendations list. It is currently the third best-reviewed adventure game on GameSpot.
The game's Goat Puzzle appeared on Computer and Video Games' 2011 feature, "Gaming's hardest puzzles". In 2012, it was listed on GameFront's "5 Crazy Difficult and Intricate Video Game Puzzles". Computer and Video Games also ranked Barrington's original intro theme 21st on its 2012 "Video game soundtracks: The 100 best themes of all time" list. The Telegraph listed Khan as one of "The 10 best video game assassins", while in 2013, Kotaku listed him as one of "The Scariest Clowns And Jesters In Video Games". The Director's Cut has been placed on top lists as well, particularly the iOS versions.
### Influence
In his book Game Plan: Great Designs that Changed the Face of Computer Gaming, British video game journalist Ste Curran wrote that Broken Sword influenced the adventure games Toonstruck, in which Cecil has a "Special Thanks" credit, and Escape from Monkey Island, which features a puzzle that involves a broken sword. Kevin Bruner, co-founder of Telltale Games, has said that he is a Broken Sword fan. Ashton Raze, a writer for The Telegraph and the co-creator of the 2013 adventure game Richard & Alice, said that Broken Sword is his biggest influence. In his review of the 2010 adventure game Deponia, Declan Skews of Video Games Interactive said that the game drew inspiration from Broken Sword.
#### The Da Vinci Code
Cecil has said that the game's fanbase believes Dan Brown to have been influenced by Broken Sword when writing his novel, The Da Vinci Code, because of the parallels between the two works. Cecil claimed that he is flattered by this sentiment, but that he would never claim so himself due to the threat of Brown's "very serious" lawyers. Joao Diniz Sanches of Pocket Gamer said Broken Sword's story is a "tale, some would argue, that effortlessly outclasses Dan Brown's similarly themed and tricksy novel." In an article about Broken Sword, Computer and Video Games described the Knights Templar legend as a "great mythology to base a game on", and noted that Broken Sword "came out years before the Da Vinci Code made that sort of thing popular."
### Sequels and re-releases
Broken Sword's success led to it creating a series that would spawn four sequels. Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror was released in 1997, and retained the same engine, while expanding gameplay by allowing players to control both George and Nicole to solve puzzles. In 2003, Revolution released Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, which moved towards 3D graphics via the RenderWare engine and incorporating a direct-control mechanism for its gameplay.
In 2006, the company released Broken Sword: The Angel of Death (known as Secrets of the Ark: A Broken Sword Game in North America), which returned to the point-and-click system used in the first two games. The game was designed to use Sumo Digital's game engine, but released only for home computer. After the fourth title, Revolution initiated a Kickstarter project in August 2012 to raise capital for creating a fifth installment under the title Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse, releasing it in two episodes in 2013 and 2014. The game returned the series to 2D graphics, and it was released in September 2013. and a new game engine based on the original system used for The Shadow of the Templars.
In 2009, Cecil decided to remake the original title for more updated platforms, such as Wii and Nintendo DS, and released between 2009 and 2012 Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – The Director's Cut. The extended version created several new puzzles, reimagined the presentation with comic book styled approach for text and conversation, and incorporated new story elements concerning Nicole Collard's involvement in the original plot, while changing several puzzles and removing "death" sequences. After releasing the Director's Cut version of Broken Sword, Revolution released a remastered edition of the second game, titled Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror – Remastered, in 2010.
### Retrospectives
In June 2020, comedian Jason Manford conducted a lengthy retrospective interview with Charles Cecil and Rolf Saxon about the game's development and legacy. This followed Manford's live playthrough of the entire game over the course of several weeks on YouTube, during the first UK COVID-19 lockdown.
### Film
In May 2007, ComingSoon.net reported that Cecil, encouraged by the success of The Angel of Death, had begun work on a Broken Sword theatrical film adaptation. According to the website, producers Jay Douglas and Nav Guptatheir and their CastleBright Studios production company were involved. Justin Kaplan introduced Cecil to the company and was set to be one of the producers. Conversations had begun with directors and screenwriters from films such as Harry Potter, Casino Royale and X-Men.
In July 2008, Cecil said he was conversing with small studios from Los Angeles. Although he was interested in making a film, he believed that it was not necessary, since the series was already successful and a bad film could only "damage" its reputation. Cecil said that he was not prepared to "give somebody [he doesn]'t know the editorial control", and that, should the film be created, he would write it himself. He wanted any adaptation to be true to the source material, a film that "enhances [the game] rather than cashes in on it". In May 2009, Cecil stated that he was in discussion with the production company Radar Pictures, known for films such as The Last Samurai and The Chronicles of Riddick, and that he was re-writing the game into a film.
In August 2012, Cecil said that he and Revolution were trying to "find the right partner" to create the film. Cecil believed that "a lot of film makers now in their early 30s played Broken Sword the first time around, so they have a lot of affection, and a number of them know a lot about the brand as well." However, he restated his opinion that it "would be much better not to have a movie at all, than to have a bad movie." While Cecil said that Revolution's main focus was the upcoming Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse, he added that he was "sure there [would] be a film at some point". He also said that he was "sure it will be really good, because we'll do our utmost to make sure that it is."
|
68,685 |
Bobby Robson
| 1,173,360,297 |
English footballer and manager
|
[
"1933 births",
"1958 FIFA World Cup players",
"1962 FIFA World Cup players",
"1986 FIFA World Cup managers",
"1990 FIFA World Cup managers",
"2009 deaths",
"Association football people awarded knighthoods",
"BBC Sports Personality Lifetime Achievement Award recipients",
"Commanders of the Order of the British Empire",
"Deaf association football players",
"Deaths from lung cancer in England",
"England men's international footballers",
"England national football team managers",
"English Football Hall of Fame inductees",
"English Football League managers",
"English Football League players",
"English Football League representative players",
"English deaf people",
"English expatriate football managers",
"English expatriate men's footballers",
"English expatriate sportspeople in Canada",
"English expatriate sportspeople in Portugal",
"English expatriate sportspeople in Spain",
"English expatriate sportspeople in the Netherlands",
"English football managers",
"English knights",
"English men's footballers",
"Eredivisie managers",
"Expatriate football managers in Portugal",
"Expatriate football managers in Spain",
"Expatriate football managers in the Netherlands",
"Expatriate men's soccer players in Canada",
"FC Barcelona managers",
"FC Porto managers",
"Footballers from County Durham",
"Fulham F.C. managers",
"Fulham F.C. players",
"Ipswich Town F.C. managers",
"Knights Bachelor",
"La Liga managers",
"Men's association football forwards",
"Newcastle United F.C. managers",
"PSV Eindhoven managers",
"People from Langley Park, County Durham",
"People from Sacriston",
"Premier League managers",
"Primeira Liga managers",
"Sporting CP managers",
"UEFA Cup winning managers",
"UEFA Euro 1988 managers",
"United Soccer Association players",
"Vancouver Royals players",
"West Bromwich Albion F.C. players"
] |
Sir Robert William Robson CBE (18 February 1933 – 31 July 2009) was an English footballer and football manager. His career included periods playing for and later managing the England national team and being a UEFA Cup-winning manager at Ipswich Town. He is widely considered to be one of the best English managers of all time.
Robson's professional playing career as an inside forward spanned nearly 20 years, during which he played for three clubs: Fulham, West Bromwich Albion, and, briefly, Vancouver Royals. He also made 20 appearances for England, scoring four goals. After his playing career, he found success as both a club and international manager, winning league championships in both the Netherlands and Portugal, earning trophies in England and Spain, and taking England to the semi-finals of the 1990 FIFA World Cup, which remained the national team's best run in a World Cup since 1966 until they reached the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup. His last management role was as a mentor to the manager of the Republic of Ireland national team, while his final official club job was at boyhood club Newcastle United, whom he left in 2004. He held several managerial positions outside of England, most notably one year at Barcelona in 1996–97, as well as stints at PSV, Sporting CP and Porto.
Robson was created a Knight Bachelor in 2002, was inducted as a member of the English Football Hall of Fame in 2003, and was the honorary president of Ipswich Town. From 1991 onwards, he had recurrent medical problems with cancer, and in March 2008, put his name and efforts into the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation, a cancer research charity which had raised over £12 million as of March 2018. In August 2008, his lung cancer was confirmed to be terminal; he said, "My condition is described as static and has not altered since my last bout of chemotherapy... I am going to die sooner rather than later. But then everyone has to go sometime and I have enjoyed every minute." He died just under a year later.
## Early life
Bobby Robson was born in Sacriston, County Durham, the fourth of five sons of Philip and Lilian Robson (née Watt). When he was a few months old, Robson's family moved to the nearby village of Langley Park where his father was a coal miner. Their two-bedroom house had no bath and an outside toilet. As a boy, he was often taken by his father to watch Newcastle United play at St James' Park on Saturday afternoons, requiring a 34-mile round trip. Robson described Jackie Milburn and Len Shackleton as his childhood heroes. Both played for Newcastle in the inside-forward position, the position Robson would later assume during his playing career.
Robson attended Langley Park primary school and then Waterhouses secondary modern school, after failing his eleven-plus but the headmaster did not allow the school football team to join a league. Instead, he began to play for Langley Park Juniors on Saturday mornings at age 11, and by the time he was 15, he was representing the club at under-18 level. Robson played football whenever he possibly could but left school aged 15 to start work as an electrician's apprentice for the National Coal Board in the Langley Park colliery. In May 1950, Bill Dodgin, the manager of Fulham, made a personal visit to the Robson household to offer Bobby a professional contract. Despite being offered a contract by nearby Middlesbrough, the offer made by Dodgin was too attractive to turn down, so he signed for Fulham and moved to London, playing as a wing half and inside forward. Robson had also interested his beloved Newcastle, but he opted to join Fulham as, in his opinion, "Newcastle made no appreciable effort to secure [my] signature." He also thought he stood a better chance of breaking into the first team at Fulham. Robson had partial deafness in one ear, which rendered him ineligible to be called up for national service.
## Playing career
### Club playing career
Although Robson had signed professionally, his father insisted he continue to work as an electrician. He spent the day working at the Festival of Britain site and trained three nights a week at Fulham. Eventually, this took its toll on Robson and he gave up his trade for full-time professional football.
In 1950, Robson made his first-team debut for Fulham, recently promoted to the First Division, in a match against Sheffield Wednesday. He came to regard Fulham as "a nice club, a social club...", but "never... a serious, championship-challenging club". Indeed, he and Fulham were relegated from the top-flight in the 1951–52 season, but he made his return to the First Division, four years later, when he signed for Vic Buckingham's West Bromwich Albion in March 1956. The transfer fee of £25,000 was a club record for West Brom at the time.
He made his West Brom debut in a 4–0 home defeat to Manchester City on 10 March 1956. In 1957–58, he was the club's top league goalscorer; his tally of 24 goals included four in a 5–1 win against Burnley. Often playing as a midfielder, he went on to play 257 matches and score 61 goals for West Brom, and he captained the team for the 1960–61 and 1961–62 seasons. However, in August 1962, he returned to Fulham after a disagreement with West Brom vice-chairman Jim Gaunt over his salary. The ongoing dispute over both minimum and maximum wages in the game, instigated by Robson's teammate Jimmy Hill and the Professional Footballers' Association, combined with the birth of Robson's second son, prompted Robson to demand a higher salary. Gaunt refused to negotiate Robson's contract, so Robson placed a transfer request and was sold to Fulham for £20,000 in a deal which doubled his salary. Soon after Robson joined Fulham, the club sold Alan Mullery and Rodney Marsh, meaning Robson's chances of securing any significant honour there were substantially reduced. Robson himself stated, "In all my time as a footballer, I didn't win a thing."
Despite press reports of interest from Arsenal, and the offer of a player-manager role by Southend United, Robson left Fulham in 1967 and accepted a three-year deal with Canada's Vancouver Royals. He was to be player-manager in their inaugural 1968 season in the North American Soccer League (NASL) and believed it "was a chance too good to miss". He began scouting and holding tryout camps for the new team in late 1967. The position proved difficult; a long-distance joint-ownership agreement gave the Hungarian footballer Ferenc Puskás control over the San Francisco section of the squad, while Robson took care of the Vancouver squad. Robson was dissatisfied by this situation and when, in January 1968, Fulham offered him a contract as their manager, he accepted the position at Craven Cottage.
### International playing career
During his first spell at Fulham, Robson participated in two ambassadorial Football Association tours in the West Indies in 1955 and South Africa in 1956. However, it was during his time at West Bromwich Albion that he graduated to the full England squad, with his first call-up in 1956. His manager, Vic Buckingham, advocated the "push and run" approach to the game, a precursor to "total football", and playing this, Robson graduated to the full England squad in 1956, It was also at West Brom when Robson met future England international and assistant coach Don Howe.
Robson went on to make 20 appearances for the England national team, making his debut in a November 1957 victory against France, scoring twice in a 4–0 victory. Although he made a successful debut, he was dropped for England's next match, against Scotland, in favour of Bobby Charlton. However, Robson was selected for the 1958 FIFA World Cup squad, ahead of Nat Lofthouse and Stanley Matthews, but returned from host nation Sweden disappointed after England were defeated by the Soviet Union in a group play-off match.
Following the World Cup, Robson became an established member of the England squad, enjoying considerable success in a period between October 1960 and March 1961 when he played in six England victories, including scoring a goal in the record 9–3 defeat of Scotland at Wembley Stadium. He was selected for the 1962 World Cup finals in Chile, but an injury to his ankle sustained in a pre-tournament friendly against a Chilean club side ruled him out of most of the tournament. As Robson recalled, "I never played for England again... my international career was unfulfilled." His place in the England team was taken by Bobby Moore.
## Managerial career
### Early club management
In 1959, the then England manager and the Football Association (FA) director of coaching, Walter Winterbottom, suggested to Robson that he take a coaching course at Lilleshall. He obtained coaching qualifications during his second spell at Fulham, and coached Oxford University A.F.C. Robson made his debut as a manager in January 1968 at his former club Fulham, against Macclesfield Town, then in the Cheshire County League, in the third round of the FA Cup. Fulham were struggling with 16 points from 24 matches. Despite the acquisition of the young Malcolm Macdonald, Robson could not save the club from relegation to the Second Division, and he left them in November with the club sitting eighth in the Second Division. He discovered he had been sacked not from the club itself, but from the headline "Robson sacked" on an Evening Standard placard outside Putney station.
### Ipswich Town
Robson moved on to Ipswich Town in 1969 and it was there that he established his reputation as a successful manager, supported by the club chairman John Cobbold and then later by his brother Patrick Cobbold. He was offered the vacant job at the Suffolk club after a chance encounter with Town director Murray Sangster while scouting at Portman Road for Chelsea manager Dave Sexton. After four mediocre seasons, Robson led Ipswich to fourth place in the First Division and success in the Texaco Cup in the 1972–73 season. In the following nine seasons, Ipswich finished lower than sixth place in the First Division only once, in the 1977–78 season. However, that season was a success with a 1–0 victory over Arsenal in the FA Cup final. His reign at Ipswich lasted 13 years, during which time the club twice finished as League runners-up, and made regular appearances in European competitions, winning the UEFA Cup in 1981 with a 5–4 aggregate victory over Dutch side AZ 67 Alkmaar. About that team, Robson said: "We played with two strikers, no wingers, Eric Gates sitting off the front two, two semi-wide midfield players in Arnold Muhren and Frans Thijssen and Johnny Wark sitting in the holding role". During his 13-year tenure, he brought in only 14 players from other clubs, most notably Allan Hunter, Bryan Hamilton and Paul Mariner, relying instead on players developed through Ipswich's youth programmes, including Terry Butcher, George Burley, John Wark, Mick Mills, Colin Viljoen, Alan Brazil, Trevor Whymark, Brian Talbot, Kevin Beattie and Eric Gates, who all went on to play international football. His imports included Dutch players Frans Thijssen and Arnold Mühren. Robson "was not a tactical genius" but he "showed a talent for developing new players, with his good interpersonal skills, caring attitude, hard work and enthusiasm helping them to achieve their best".
In 2002, in recognition of his achievements with the club, a life-size statue of Robson was unveiled opposite the Cobbold Stand of Ipswich Town's ground, Portman Road. On 7 July 2006, Robson was named as honorary president of Ipswich Town Football Club, the first since Lady Blanche Cobbold who had died in 1987.
### England manager
Robson's achievements with Ipswich earned him a job offer from the Football Association for the position of national coach, and he declined an offer of a ten-year contract extension and increased salary from Ipswich director Patrick Cobbold. On 7 July 1982, two days after England were knocked out of the 1982 World Cup, he succeeded Ron Greenwood as coach of the England national team, selecting former West Bromwich Albion teammate Don Howe as his chief coach.
Robson's first match in charge saw immediate controversy, as he dropped Kevin Keegan for the match against Denmark. On 21 September 1983, Robson suffered his only loss in the 28 qualifying matches he was to undertake as England manager. The defeat, again to Denmark, ultimately led to England's failure to qualify for the 1984 European Championships and resulted in Robson offering to resign in favour of Brian Clough. The resignation was rejected by FA chairman Bert Millichip (primarily down to his and the FA's disdain for Clough), and Robson went on to lead the England team to qualify for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.
England began the competition poorly and captain Bryan Robson was injured with a recurrence of a dislocated shoulder. Bobby Robson changed the team's tactics for the final match of the first round, selecting Peter Beardsley ahead of Mark Hateley as a striking partner for Gary Lineker. The team won its next two matches, against Poland and Paraguay, 3–0, and qualified for the quarter-finals. England were defeated in the last eight by Argentina with a brace of goals from Diego Maradona, the infamous "Hand of God" goal and the "Goal of the Century" he scored five minutes later. Robson was unimpressed by Maradona's claim of divine intervention:
> It wasn't the hand of God. It was the hand of a rascal. God had nothing to do with it... That day, Maradona was diminished in my eyes forever.
Robson's England dropped only one point in qualifying for Euro 1988, which included an 8–0 victory over Turkey. However, this was followed by failure at the tournament itself, held in West Germany, where England were eliminated in the group stage. They finished bottom of their group, succumbing to defeats against the Republic of Ireland, the eventual winners, the Netherlands, and the eventual runners-up, the Soviet Union. Robson was vilified by the British press, and after a draw in a friendly with Saudi Arabia, one newspaper demanded, "In the name of Allah, go." Again Robson submitted his resignation, and again it was rejected by Millichip (again Brian Clough is often cited as a reason).
Robson led England without conceding a goal through the six-match qualification for the 1990 World Cup where they were one of six seeded teams. Again they were placed in a group with the Netherlands and the Republic of Ireland, with Egypt the fourth side. As in the 1986 World Cup, Robson was denied the service of his captain, Bryan Robson, who injured his achilles tendon which prevented him playing in the latter stages of the tournament. England topped their qualifying group, accumulating four points from their three matches. However, their progress was not without controversy. England changed formation from their traditional 4–4–2 to 5–3–2 incorporating a sweeper, with some sources suggesting this was due to player revolt after the 1–1 draw in the first match with the Republic of Ireland. Robson denied this claim:
> ...I made the switch, not them. I had no intention of allowing van Basten and Gullit to rip holes in us...
This was followed by victories over Belgium and Cameroon in the knock-out stages, to set up a semi-final with West Germany. England lost the match on a penalty shoot-out, after the score had been tied at 1–1 following extra time. Robson said afterwards, "[N]ot a day goes by when [he] does not think about the semi-final and other choices [he] might have made." Robson was the second coach, after Alf Ramsey, to take England to a World Cup semi-final, and the first coach to do so on foreign soil, an achievement not equalled until Gareth Southgate's team reached the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup.
Robson's final game in charge of England was the third-place play off against hosts Italy, which England lost 2–1.
### Continental management
Before the 1990 World Cup, the FA told Robson it would not renew his contract as England manager, so he moved on to the Netherlands to coach PSV Eindhoven, succeeding manager Guus Hiddink, who had left the team after leading them to European Cup victory and four consecutive Eredivisie titles. PSV sought a manager capable of instilling discipline into a fractious squad, much as Hiddink had done previously. Robson described the move as "a culture shock" but felt "a sense of adventure". News of Robson's new position in the Netherlands became public before the start of the 1990 World Cup, leading to tabloid stories impugning Robson's patriotism; he sued Today for calling him a "traitor".
The Dutch penchant for tactical debate surprised Robson. In an interview with Voetbal International, he lamented, "An English pro accepts the manager's decision. After every match here, the substitutes come and visit me." Another of his challenges at PSV was handling the Brazilian international Romário. Robson became frustrated with the Brazilian's work ethic, although admitted "in some matches he would be scintillating". Robson arranged showdown talks with Romário, with Frank Arnesen, Robson's assistant, acting as a translator. The talks proved unsuccessful, with Romário unwilling to change his lifestyle. Despite this, PSV won the Eredivisie in both the 1990–91 and 1991–92 seasons. However, the team did not make the progress expected by the board in European competitions and Robson was informed he would be leaving the club at the end of the 1991–92 season.
Robson moved to Sporting CP in July 1992, where his Portuguese interpreter was a young José Mourinho, future Porto, Chelsea, Internazionale, Real Madrid, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Roma manager. Robson guided the club to a third-place finish in his first season in charge while admitting the club was in "a terrible state". He described the club's president as a "loose cannon" who frequently signed players without Robson's consent. Robson was sacked in December 1993 with the club sitting at the top of the league table. Club president Sousa Cintra cited the club's early exit from the UEFA Cup, at the hands of Casino Salzburg, as the reason for his dismissal.
Sporting CP's rivals Porto quickly hired Robson, with Mourinho appointed as his assistant manager. Living in the same apartment block at the time was another future Porto, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur manager, the young André Villas-Boas, who, aged 16, introduced himself to Robson. Robson subsequently appointed Villas-Boas to work in the Porto observation department and helped him gain his UEFA "C" coaching badge in Scotland, despite him technically being ineligible as he was aged 17. Porto were in a poor state when Robson arrived and the average attendance had dwindled to 10,000. The club promptly went on to beat Robson's former club, Sporting CP, in the Taça de Portugal final, following that achievement with successive League titles in the 1994–95 and 1995–96 seasons.
Such was the impact of Robson at Porto, he became known to the locals as "Bobby Five-O" in honour of the number of matches Porto won 5–0, and he signed a new contract with the club in 1995. Robson had malignant melanoma and missed the first few months of the 1995–96 season. He still successfully led Porto in defence of their league title.
A phone call during the summer of 1996 from Barcelona vice-president Joan Gaspart to discuss Luís Figo resulted in an offer of employment with the Spanish club. Robson took over in July 1996, where again his assistant was Mourinho; Robson had made Mourinho's move with him to the Camp Nou a condition of his employment. One of the key decisions Robson made during his brief tenure at Barcelona was the US\$19.5 million signing of Ronaldo, who was influential in a season when Barcelona won the Copa del Rey, Supercopa de España and UEFA Cup Winners' Cup. Robson himself was voted European Manager of the Year for 1996–97, while Ronaldo stated, "as a trainer without doubt [Robson] is one of the greatest in the world".
The 1997–98 season saw Robson moved "upstairs" to the general manager position, with Louis van Gaal taking over as manager, but Robson stayed in this position for only one season before returning to manage PSV on a short-term deal for the 1998–99 season. PSV missed out on the league title, finishing third behind Feyenoord and Willem II, but Robson still led the club to victory in the Johan Cruyff Shield and also qualification for the UEFA Champions League on the last day of the season.
### Return to England
After Robson's contract expired, he returned to England to take up a position in the Football Association's technical department, but following the resignation of Ruud Gullit at Newcastle United, Robson moved to St James' Park in September 1999. Robson was disappointed with the club's opening salary offer, stating, "[I]t was miles below the going rate," but negotiated a one-year, £1 million deal.
In Robson's first home match in charge, bottom-placed Newcastle faced second bottom Sheffield Wednesday, thrashing them 8–0. In his first season in charge, 1999–2000, Robson led the club to an 11th-place finish, with 14 wins from his 32 matches in charge. In late 2000, following the resignation of ex-Magpies boss Kevin Keegan as England manager, the FA asked Newcastle club chairman Freddy Shepherd to permit Robson to take over in a part-time caretaker capacity, but the request was refused. Robson guided Newcastle from bottom of the Premier League to a fourth-place finish in the 2001–02 season. The following season, Newcastle finished third, ensuring qualification for the UEFA Champions League for the second consecutive year. However, Robson was unable to guide Newcastle through the Champions League qualifying rounds, and the club was dropped to participate in the UEFA Cup for the 2003–04 season. At the end of the 2003–04 season, Newcastle finished fifth in the table, five points short of the Champions League qualifying fourth place but reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup before losing to Marseille.
Robson held the Newcastle post until 30 August 2004, when he was dismissed by Freddy Shepherd, after a poor start to the Premier League season and alleged discontent in the dressing room. Robson's dismissal followed publication of his off the record observation of his disappointment that only 5,000 fans stayed to see the traditional lap of honour made by the players at St James' Park at the end of the previous season. However, he remains held in the highest esteem by some fans; he was granted the Freedom of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne on 2 March 2005.
> What is a club in any case? Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it. It's not the television contracts, get-out clauses, marketing departments or executive boxes. It's the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city. It's a small boy clambering up stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his father's hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him and, without being able to do a thing about it, falling in love.
Robson's autobiography, entitled Bobby Robson: Farewell but not Goodbye was released in 2005. The title is based on one of his quotes upon leaving the England job in 1990: "I'm here to say goodbye—maybe not goodbye but farewell." In the book, Robson was critical of Shepherd, claiming that while manager he was denied information regarding the players' contracts and transfer negotiations. He also criticised Shepherd and the club's deputy chairman Douglas Hall, for their focus on the first team and St James' Park, causing them to neglect less glamorous issues, such as the training ground, youth development and talent scouts. The club's training ground was later blamed by Graeme Souness, Robson's successor, for a series of injuries to first team players.
### Football consultant for Republic of Ireland and retirement
On 7 June 2005, Robson declined the invitation to become director of football of Heart of Midlothian because he wanted to stay in the Newcastle area. On 13 January 2006, Steve Staunton was appointed manager of the Republic of Ireland national team, with Robson named in a support role as "international football consultant". Robson stepped down from his role of consultant on 17 November 2007 following the nation's final match in their unsuccessful qualifying campaign for Euro 2008. Robson was a former vice president of the League Managers Association, a non-executive role.
## Life outside football
### Personal life
Robson met Elsie Gray on a trip back to his parents' home in Langley Park. Gray was a student nurse, and later a teacher. They were married on 25 June 1955 with Fulham teammate Tom Wilson as Robson's best man.
After 1991, Robson was repeatedly diagnosed with cancer. He had several operations and in 2006 was operated on for a brain tumour. This, on occasion, affected his work; while at Porto, for example, Robson had malignant melanoma, which resulted in his missing the first few months of the 1995–96 season. On 17 October 2006, it was revealed that Robson had been given the all-clear and was set to see out his contract as consultant to the Irish team. Robson revealed on 7 May 2007 he had been diagnosed with cancer for the fifth time. On 17 May 2008, Robson was the guest of honour at the 2008 FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium when Portsmouth defeated Cardiff City 1–0. He presented the trophy to the victorious captain, Sol Campbell.
### Other activities
Robson made a number of product endorsements, including an appearance in Carlsberg's "Best Pub Side" television commercial. He also acted as a pundit for ITV during the 2002 World Cup and Euro 2004.
### Bobby Robson Foundation
Robson defeated bowel cancer in 1992, a malignant melanoma in 1995, and a tumour in his right lung and a brain tumour, both in 2006. Treatment of these conditions had left him partially paralysed due to a stroke caused by the brain tumour, and also with a partially prosthetic upper jaw after the melanoma was surgically removed. His fifth diagnosis of cancer in 2007, consisting of cancerous nodules in both lungs, was diagnosed as terminal in February 2007, and as of December 2008, was being controlled through bouts of chemotherapy. After these experiences, and following his fifth diagnosis with cancer, Robson devoted the remaining years of his life to helping fight the disease. On 25 March 2008, he launched the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation. The Foundation raised over £1 million, which funded equipment for the Sir Bobby Robson Cancer Trials Research Centre, in the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne, and would go on to fund other cancer projects in the North East of England.
In aid of the Foundation, Robson's 1990 World Cup semi-final 4–3 loss after penalties against West Germany was replayed on 26 July 2009 as the Sir Bobby Robson Trophy match at St James' Park, featuring players from the original 1990 World Cup squads and other special guests. Robson was given a guard of honour before the match, which finished 3–2 to the England side.
At the time of Robson's death, the Foundation had raised £1.6 million. Donations totalling £156,000 were received by the Foundation in the 18 days following his death, and on 15 October 2009, it was announced the Foundation had raised over £2 million, and that at the request of Robson's family, Alan Shearer would take over Robson's role as the Foundation's patron. It passed the £2.5 million mark in September 2010. Three other patrons were added in 2010, Steve Gibson, Mick Mills and Niall Quinn.
## Death
On 31 July 2009, Robson died of lung cancer at his home in County Durham, aged 76, after a long battle with the disease. After the news of his death, leading figures from the world of football and politics paid tribute to him. Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson called him a "great friend, a wonderful individual and tremendous football man". UEFA president Michel Platini said, "He will be remembered not only for his playing career and his outstanding managerial career at both club and international level, but also because he was a truly warm and passionate human being." Gary Lineker said, "It is a sad day and a great loss. He was a wonderful man and will be deeply missed by everybody in the country. I never played for a more enthusiastic man. He gave so much to the game." Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair described Robson as a "real Geordie gentleman". According to the then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Robson "epitomised everything that is great about football in this country". His friend, the broadcaster Michael Parkinson, said, "Robson will be remembered long after the present lot are old bones. By his decency, his humour, his love of the game's traditions and origins and confusion at what it had become, he made present day football look what it is – shabby by comparison. I can think of no more fitting epitaph."
Robson's funeral, a private family ceremony, took place on 5 August 2009. The location remained undisclosed at the request of his family until the funeral had taken place. It was later revealed to be Esh, County Durham. A thanksgiving service for Robson was held on 21 September 2009 at Durham Cathedral. One thousand invited guests attended the service, which was also broadcast live on national television, and to Newcastle United's St James' Park, Ipswich Town's Portman Road ground and Fulham's Craven Cottage. Robson was survived by his wife and their three sons: Andrew, Paul and Mark.
## Achievements
Robson was awarded a number of honours for his contributions to football. In 1990, at the end of his eight-year reign as England manager, he was appointed a CBE in 1991 and in 2002, he was knighted; both awards were for services to football.
In 2002 (during his time as Newcastle manager), the 69-year-old Robson was awarded the freedom of Newcastle upon Tyne and the UEFA President's Award for "services to football". He was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2003 in recognition of his impact as a manager. Following his time as Newcastle United manager in 2005, Robson was made an Honorary Freeman of Newcastle, which, in his autobiography, he described as being "the proudest moment of my life". Robson also won the 1992 Football Writers' Association Tribute Award for an outstanding contribution to the national game, and the 2001 British Sports Writers' Association Pat Besford Trophy for Outstanding Achievement. In 2005, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Sports Coach UK Awards, and was also awarded the Eircom International Personality of the Year in 2006. On 9 December 2007, Robson was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year show in recognition of "his contribution as both player and manager in a career spanning more than half a century".
On 5 May 2008, during the 30th anniversary celebrations of Ipswich Town's 1978 FA Cup win, Robson was granted the Freedom of Ipswich by the Lady Mayor. On 8 December 2008, he earned another such accolade when he was given the Freedom of the City of Durham. In March 2009, UEFA awarded Robson the Emerald UEFA Order of Merit award, awarded to "individuals who have dedicated their talents to the good of the game". The award was presented to Robson at St James' Park on 26 July 2009, prior to the Sir Bobby Robson Trophy match, and just five days before his death.
### Posthumous honours
In December 2009, Robson was posthumously awarded the FIFA Fair Play Award, for the "gentlemanly qualities he showed throughout his career as a player and coach". All English football league matches held a one minute's applause in his memory at the beginning of the 2009–10 season.
The Football League gave Newcastle United and Ipswich Town special dispensation to wear special commemorative kits for their Championship match on 26 September 2009 at Portman Road, in aid of Sir Bobby's Foundation. At half-time during this match, the North Stand of Portman Road was renamed the Sir Bobby Robson Stand.
The first anniversary of Robson's death on 31 July 2010 was marked with a ceremony and pre-season friendly match at Newcastle's St James' Park, between two of his former clubs Newcastle United and PSV Eindhoven, involving Robson's PSV captain Stan Valckx presenting a PSV shirt to the club.
In July 2010, plans were unveiled for a memorial garden to Robson to be built in Newcastle. It was to be created by the city council in partnership with the regeneration company NE1Ltd, and located on Gallowgate street close to the Newcastle United stadium St James' Park. Work began on the site in November 2010, which was completed by Spring 2011. The garden covers 400 square meters, and features a tiered seating area and sculpted stone plinths reflecting aspects of his life and work. The area also hosts 400 square metre memorial garden to Sir Bobby Robson.
With a keen interest in cricket as well as football, Robson was to have replaced Mike Gatting as president of the Lord's Taverners charity and cricket club in 2007, but this was prevented by his ill-health. After his death, the club held a dinner in his honour, as "The best President we never had".
In March 2011, the East Coast train operating company named one of its Class 91 electric locomotives Sir Bobby Robson, unveiled at Newcastle station by his widow Elsie and Alan Shearer. Similarly, in December 2011, the Port of Tyne Authority named its new work boat the Sir Bobby Robson. On 6 May 2012, a statue of Robson created by sculptor Tom Maley was unveiled at St James' Park before a 2–0 defeat to eventual champions Manchester City. On 16 July 2013, marking the 150th anniversary celebrations of the FA, the FA designated 10 August as the Sir Bobby Robson National Football Day, celebrated as a day to celebrate the national game. In 2018, Bobby Robson: More Than A Manager, a feature-length British film about Robson's career and cancer diagnosis, was released to critical acclaim.
In September 2020 the Sir Bobby Robson School opened in Ipswich. The school will serve children aged 8–16 with social, emotional and mental health needs.
## Career statistics
### Club
### International
Scores and results list England's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Robson goal.
## Managerial statistics
## Honours
### Player
England
- British Home Championship: 1960–61
### Manager
Ipswich Town
- UEFA Cup: 1980–81
- FA Cup: 1977–78
- National Fives Tournament: 1977
- Texaco Cup: 1972–73
PSV Eindhoven
- Eredivisie: 1990–91, 1991–92
- Johan Cruyff Shield: 1998
Porto
- Primeira Divisão: 1994–95, 1995–96
- Taça de Portugal: 1993–94
- Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira: 1994
Barcelona
- Copa del Rey: 1996–97
- Supercopa de España: 1996
- European Cup Winners' Cup: 1996–97
Newcastle United
- UEFA Intertoto Cup runners-up: 2001
England
- British Home Championship: 1982–83
- Rous Cup: 1986, 1988, 1988
Individual
- FWA Tribute Award: 1992
- European Manager of the Year: 1996–97
- Premier League Manager of the Month: February 2000, August 2000, December 2001, February 2002, January 2003, October 2003
- BSWA Pat Besford Trophy: 2001
- UEFA President's Award: 2002
- LMA Special Merit Award: 2002
- English Football Hall of Fame Inductee: 2003
- PFA Merit Award: 2003
- FAI International Football Awards – International Personality: 2006
- BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award: 2007
- FIFA Fair Play Award: 2009
- FIFA Order of Merit: 2009
- UEFA Order of Merit: 2009
- Ipswich Town Hall of Fame: Inductee 2009
## See also
- List of longest managerial reigns in association football
|
33,430 |
Wolfenstein 3D
| 1,173,898,158 |
1992 video game
|
[
"1992 video games",
"3D Realms games",
"3DO Interactive Multiplayer games",
"Acorn Archimedes games",
"Activision games",
"Alternate history video games",
"Amiga 1200 games",
"Amiga games",
"AmigaOS 4 games",
"Apogee games",
"Apple IIGS games",
"Atari Jaguar games",
"Atari games",
"Browser games",
"Cancelled Atari Lynx games",
"Cancelled Sega Genesis games",
"Censored video games",
"Classic Mac OS games",
"Commercial video games with freely available source code",
"Cultural depictions of Adolf Hitler",
"DOS games",
"Experimental medical treatments in fiction",
"First-person shooters",
"FormGen games",
"Game Boy Advance games",
"Games commercially released with DOSBox",
"IOS games",
"Id Software games",
"Imagineer games",
"Interplay Entertainment games",
"NEC PC-9801 games",
"Obscenity controversies in video games",
"PlayStation 3 games",
"PlayStation Network games",
"Shareware games",
"Single-player video games",
"Sprite-based first-person shooters",
"Super Nintendo Entertainment System games",
"Video games about Nazi Germany",
"Video games developed in the United States",
"Video games scored by Bobby Prince",
"Video games with 2.5D graphics",
"Windows Mobile Professional games",
"Windows Mobile Standard games",
"Wolfenstein",
"Wolfenstein 3D engine games",
"World War II first-person shooters",
"Xbox 360 Live Arcade games"
] |
Wolfenstein 3D is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen. Originally released on May 5, 1992, for DOS, it was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game Castle Wolfenstein, and is the third installment in the Wolfenstein series. In Wolfenstein 3D, the player assumes the role of Allied spy William "B.J." Blazkowicz during World War II as he escapes from the Nazi German prison Castle Wolfenstein and carries out a series of crucial missions against the Nazis. The player traverses each of the game's levels to find an elevator to the next level or kill a final boss, fighting Nazi soldiers, dogs, and other enemies with knives and a variety of guns.
Wolfenstein 3D was the second major independent release by id Software, after the Commander Keen series of episodes. In mid-1991, programmer John Carmack experimented with making a fast 3D game engine by restricting the gameplay and viewpoint to a single plane, producing Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3-D as prototypes. After a design session prompted the company to shift from the family-friendly Keen to a more violent theme, programmer John Romero suggested remaking the 1981 stealth shooter Castle Wolfenstein as a fast-paced action game. He and designer Tom Hall designed the game, built on Carmack's engine, to be fast and violent, unlike other computer games on the market at the time. Wolfenstein 3D features artwork by Adrian Carmack and sound effects and music by Bobby Prince. The game was released through Apogee in two sets of three episodes under the shareware model, in which the first episode is released for free to drive interest in paying for the rest. An additional episode, Spear of Destiny, was released as a stand-alone retail title through FormGen.
Wolfenstein 3D was a critical and commercial success and is considered one of the greatest video games ever made. It garnered numerous awards and sold over 250,000 copies by the end of 1995. It has been termed the "grandfather of 3D shooters", and is widely regarded as having helped popularize the first-person shooter genre and establishing the standard of fast-paced action and technical prowess for many subsequent games in the genre, as well as showcasing the viability of the shareware publishing model at the time. FormGen developed an additional two episodes for the game, while Apogee released a pack of over 800 fan-created levels. Id Software never returned to the series, but did license the engine to numerous other titles before releasing the source code for free in 1995, and multiple other games in the Wolfenstein series have been developed by other companies since 2001.
## Gameplay
Wolfenstein 3D is a first-person shooter presented with rudimentary 3D graphics. The game is broken up into levels, each of which is a flat plane divided into areas and rooms by a grid-based pattern of walls and doors, all of equal height. Each level is themed after Nazi bunkers and buildings. To finish a level, the player must traverse through the area to reach an elevator. Levels—ten in the original episodes—are grouped together into named episodes, with the final level focusing on a boss fight with a particularly difficult enemy. While traversing the levels, the player must fight Nazi guards and soldiers, dogs, and other enemies while managing supplies of ammunition and health. The player can find weapons and ammunition placed in the levels or can collect them from dead enemies; weapons include a knife, a pistol, a submachine gun, and a rapid-fire chain gun. The player can also find keys that allow them to pass through locked doors. While the levels are presented in a 3D perspective, the enemies and objects are instead 2D sprites presented from several set viewing angles, a technique sometimes referred to as 2.5D graphics.
The player's health is represented by a percentage starting at 100, which is diminished when they are shot or attacked by enemies. If the player's health falls to zero, they lose one life and start the level over with a knife, a pistol, and eight bullets. The player begins each episode with four lives and can gain more by finding extra-life tokens or by earning enough points. Points are scored by killing enemies or collecting treasures scattered throughout the levels. Points can also be scored by killing all enemies in a level, collecting all treasure, finding all secret areas, or completing a level under a par time; the player's completion ratio and speed is displayed when a level is completed. Secret areas containing treasure, health refills, or ammunition can be found in hidden rooms revealed by activating certain wall tiles that slide back when triggered. The original version of the game allows the player to save their progress at any point, though in many of its ports the player can only save between levels.
## Plot
Wolfenstein 3D is divided into two sets of three episodes: "Escape from Castle Wolfenstein", "Operation: Eisenfaust", and "Die, Führer, Die!" serve as the primary trilogy, with a second trilogy titled The Nocturnal Missions including "A Dark Secret", "Trail of the Madman", and "Confrontation". The protagonist is William "B.J." Blazkowicz, an American spy of Polish descent, and the game follows his efforts to destroy the Nazi regime. In "Escape", Blazkowicz has been captured while trying to find the plans for Operation Eisenfaust (Iron Fist) and imprisoned in Castle Wolfenstein, from which he must escape. "Operation: Eisenfaust" follows his discovery and thwarting of the Nazi plan to create an army of undead mutants in Castle Hollehammer, while in "Die, Führer, Die!" he infiltrates a bunker under the Reichstag, culminating in a battle with Adolf Hitler in a robotic suit equipped with four chain guns.
The Nocturnal Missions form a prequel storyline dealing with German plans for chemical warfare. "A Dark Secret" deals with the initial pursuit through a weapons research facility of the scientist responsible for developing the weaponry. "Trail of the Madman" takes place in Castle Erlangen, where Blazkowicz's goal is to find the maps and plans for the chemical war. The story ends in "Confrontation", which is set in Castle Offenbach as he confronts the Nazi general behind the chemical warfare initiative.
### Spear of Destiny
An additional episode, titled Spear of Destiny, was released as a retail game by FormGen. It follows Blazkowicz on a different prequel mission, trying to recapture the Spear of Destiny from the Nazis after it was stolen from Versailles. FormGen later developed two sequel episodes, "Return to Danger" and "Ultimate Challenge", each of which feature Blazkowicz as he fights through another Nazi base to recover the Spear of Destiny after it has been stolen again as part of a plot to build a nuclear weapon or summon demons.
## Development
In October–December 1990, a team of employees from programming studio Softdisk calling themselves Ideas from the Deep developed the three-part video game Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons, the first game in the Commander Keen series. The group, who worked at Softdisk in Shreveport, Louisiana, developing games for the Gamer's Edge video game subscription service and disk magazine, was composed of programmers John Romero and John Carmack, designer Tom Hall, artist Adrian Carmack, and manager Jay Wilbur. After the release of the game in December through shareware publisher Apogee Software, the team planned to quit Softdisk and start their own company. When their boss, Softdisk owner Al Vekovius, confronted them on both their plans and their use of company resources to develop the game—the team had created it on their work computers, both in the office after hours and by taking the computers to John Carmack's house on the weekends—the team made no secret of their intentions. After a few weeks of negotiation, the team agreed to produce a series of games for Gamer's Edge, one every two months.
Ideas from the Deep, now formally established as id Software, used some of these to prototype ideas for their own games. Adrian Carmack used them to push his preferred, dark art style, while John Carmack began to experiment with 3D computer graphics, which until then was largely the purview of flight simulation games such as Wing Commander (1990) or wireframe 3D in games on mainframe computers. Carmack found that this was largely due to the limitations of personal computers of the time, which had difficulty displaying a fast action game in 3D due to the number of surfaces it needed to calculate, but felt that the increasing computational power of PCs meant that it may be possible. During 1991, he experimented with limiting the possible surfaces the computer needed to display, creating game levels with walls designed only on a flat grid rather than with arbitrary shapes or angles. He also took the unusual approach of creating the displayed graphics through ray casting, in which only the surfaces visible to the player were calculated rather than the entire area surrounding the player. After six weeks of development, Carmack had created a rudimentary 3D game engine that used animated 2D sprites for enemies. Id Software then used the engine for the April 1991 Softdisk game Hovertank 3D, in which the player drives a tank through a plane of colored walls and shoots nuclear monsters. In the fall of 1991, after the team—sans Wilbur—had relocated to Madison, Wisconsin, and he had largely finished the engine work for Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy, Carmack decided to implement a feature from Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, a role-playing game in development by Blue Sky Productions. Ultima Underworld was planned to display texture-mapped 3D graphics without Hovertank's restrictions of flat walls and simple lighting. Deciding that he could add texture mapping without sacrificing the engine's speed or greatly increasing the system requirements as Underworld was doing, Carmack enhanced the engine over six weeks from Hovertank 3D for another Softdisk game, the November 1991 Catacomb 3-D. Upon seeing it, Scott Miller of Apogee began to push the team to make a 3D shareware action game.
In November 1991, with the second Commander Keen trilogy of episodes nearing completion and their contractual obligations to Softdisk almost finished, id Software sat down to plan out their next major game. Designer Tom Hall, who initially wanted to do a third Keen trilogy, recognized that Carmack's programming focus had shifted from the 2D side-scrolling platform game series to 3D action games. After an initial proposal by Hall of a sci-fi project, "It's Green and Pissed", Romero suggested a 3D remake of the 1981 Castle Wolfenstein. The team was interested in the idea, as Romero, Hall, and John Carmack all had fond memories of the original title and felt the maze-like shooter gameplay fit well with Carmack's 3D game engine, while Adrian Carmack was interested in moving away from the child-friendly art style of Keen into something more violent. Encouraged by the reception to his idea, Romero expounded on it by proposing a "loud" and "cool" fast action game where the player could shoot soldiers before dragging and looting their bodies. The core of the gameplay would be fast and simple, for Romero believed that due to the novelty of a 3D game and control scheme, players would not be receptive to more complicated, slow gameplay. He felt the game would occupy a unique place in the industry, which was then dominated by slower simulation and strategy games. Adrian and John Carmack were excited by the prospect, while Hall felt that it was enjoyable enough, and that since he was the company's designer that they could return to his ideas at a later date.
Initially the team believed that they would be unable to use the Wolfenstein name due to trademark issues, and came up with multiple possible titles. They contacted Castle Wolfenstein developer Silas Warner, but learned that Muse Software had shut down in 1986, with all rights to Wolfenstein sold. The rights last belonged to someone in Michigan, and the team was able to purchase the trademark around mid-April 1992 for US\$5,000. Thus they were free to use the name Wolfenstein 3D. The game concept met with immediate approval from Scott Miller of Apogee, who considered id Software his star developer, and he guaranteed id a US\$100,000 payment on the project. Mark Rein, who had been brought on a few months prior as id's probationary president, also sold the idea of doing a retail Wolfenstein project to FormGen, which had published id's December 1991 Commander Keen in Aliens Ate My Babysitter, overcoming the publisher's concerns over Wolfenstein's proposed content. This put id in the unique position of selling simultaneously to the shareware and retail markets.
The project officially began on December 15, 1991. Romero and Hall designed the gameplay and aesthetics. Romero wanted the goal to be "to mow down Nazis", with the suspense of storming a Nazi bunker full of SS soldiers and Hitler himself, as well as dogs, blood "like you never see in games", and straightforward, lethal weapons. He also composed the general storyline for the game. Hall designed the levels while also adding collectible objects in the form of treasure and food for health items. He also did sketches for the bosses and the title screen. Carmack programmed "the core" of the game's engine in a month; he added a few features to the Wolfenstein 3D engine from Catacomb 3-D, including support for doors and decorative non-wall objects, but primarily focused on making the game run smoother and faster with higher-resolution graphics. The game was programmed in ANSI C and assembly language. The graphics for the game were planned to be in 16 color EGA, but were changed to 256 color VGA four months before release, which also enabled the game to have higher resolutions. Romero in turn worked on building a game with the engine, removing elements of the initial design, like looting enemy bodies, that he felt interrupted the flow of fast gameplay. The sprites for the enemies and objects were hand drawn at eight different angles by Adrian Carmack using Electronic Arts's Deluxe Paint II. Initially the team had an external artist who assisted him and created animated wall textures, but the team felt that the quality was poor and did not use it in the game. The level design, by Romero and Hall, due to the grid-based level design, took some inspiration from Pac-Man, and paid homage with a hidden Pac-Man level. Romero later said in 2017 that making the levels was uninteresting compared to those from Commander Keen and had to prompt Hall to finish the maps with the promise of being able to buy himself a brand new car. The team was going to include some anti-fascist references and Nazi atrocities, but left them out to avoid controversies. They ensured that the presentation of the game created the atmosphere that they wanted, adding violent animations by Adrian Carmack for enemies being shot and music and sound effects by Keen composer Bobby Prince to make the guns sound exciting. Prince took some inspiration from his days as a platoon soldier in the US Army. With the aid of a 16-bit sampler keyboard and cassette recorder, he composed realistic sounds from a shooting range in addition to Foley sounds. The development team along with Scott Miller did the voicing for the enemies. Some of the enemy shouts were based on the original Castle Wolfenstein game.
As development continued, id Software hired their former Softdisk liaison Kevin Cloud as an assistant artist, and moved the company out to Mesquite, Texas, near where Apogee was located. Scott Miller of Apogee was pleased to have his star developers nearby, and agreed to not only increase their royalty rate to 50 percent, but have Apogee create their next game for Softdisk, ScubaVenture, so that id could focus on Wolfenstein. The game was intended to be released using Apogee's shareware model of splitting it into three episodes and releasing the first for free, with ten levels per episode. The level maps were designed in 2D using a custom-made program called Tile Editor (TEd), which had been used for the entire Keen series as well as several other games. Upon finding out that the team was able to create a level in a single day using the program, Miller convinced them to instead develop six episodes, which could be sold in different-sized packs. Around the same time, the team changed members and structure: id fired probationary president Mark Rein and brought back Jay Wilbur, who had stayed in Shreveport, to be both their CEO and business team; Bobby Prince moved into the office temporarily to record sound effects, while Adrian Carmack moved out of the office to get away from the noise.
As the game neared completion, FormGen contacted id with concerns over its violence and shock content. In response, id increased these aspects; Adrian Carmack added skeletons, corpses, and bloody wall details, and Hall and Romero added screams and cries in German, along with a Death Cam that would show a replay of the death of the final boss of an episode. The team also added "Horst-Wessel-Lied", the anthem of the Nazi Party, to the opening screen. John Carmack, meanwhile, added in walls that moved when triggered to hide secret areas, a feature that Hall had been pushing for months but which Carmack had objected to for technical reasons. Hall also added in cheat codes, and wrote a back story for the game. The team did a month of playtesting in the final stage of the game's development. In the early morning of May 5, 1992, the first episode of the shareware game was completed and uploaded by Apogee and id to bulletin board systems. The other episodes were completed a few weeks later. The total development time had been around half a year, with a cost of around US\$25,000 to cover the team's rent and US\$750 per month salaries, plus around US\$6,500 for the computer John Carmack used to develop the engine and the US\$5,000 to get the Wolfenstein trademark.
The following summer, most of the id Software team developed Spear of Destiny. The single-episode game was a prequel to Wolfenstein 3D and used the same engine, but added new audio, graphics, and enemies. It was created in two months, and was published commercially by FormGen in September 1992. The publisher was concerned that the material would be controversial due to holy relics associated with World War II, but Romero felt it was similar to the Indiana Jones films. Instead of working on the game, John Carmack experimented with a new graphics engine that was licensed for Shadowcaster and became the basis of the engine for id's next game, Doom (1993).
## Release
The first episode was released as shareware for free distribution by Apogee and the whole original trilogy of episodes made available for purchase on May 5 as Wolfenstein 3D, though the purchased episodes were not actually shipped to customers until a few weeks later. The second trilogy that Miller had convinced id to create was released soon after as an add-on pack titled The Nocturnal Missions. Players were able to buy each trilogy separately or as a single game. In 1993 Apogee also published the Wolfenstein 3D Super Upgrades pack, which included 815 fan-made levels called "WolfMaster", along with a map editor titled "MapEdit" and a random level generator named "Wolf Creator". A retail Wolfenstein episode double the length of the Apogee episodes, Spear of Destiny, was released through FormGen on September 18, 1992. FormGen later published two mission packs titled "Return to Danger" and "Ultimate Challenge", each the same length as Spear of Destiny, in May 1994, and later that year published Spear of Destiny and the two mission packs together as the Spear of Destiny Super CD Package. Id released the original six Apogee episodes as a retail title through GT Software in 1993 and produced a collection of both the Apogee and FormGen episodes released through Activision in 1998.
There were two intended promotions associated with the original Apogee release, both of which were cancelled. A pushable wall maze led to a sign reading "Call Apogee and say Aardwolf" ("Snapity" in beta versions); it was intended that the first person to find the sign and carry out its instructions would win a prize (consisting of US\$1,000 or a line of Apogee games for life), but the quick creation of level editors and cheat programs for the game soon after release led id and Apogee to give up on the idea. Additionally, after completing an episode the player is given a three-letter code in addition to their total score and time. This code was intended to be a verification code as part of a high-score contest, but the sudden prevalence of editor programs resulted in the cancellation of the contest without ever being formally announced.
Imagineer bought the rights for the game, and commissioned id to port the game to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) for a US\$100,000 advance. The team was busy with the development of Doom, plus their work on Spear of Destiny, and ignored the project for seven or eight months, finally hiring Rebecca Heineman to do the work. She made no progress on the port, however, and the id team members instead spent three weeks frantically learning how to make SNES games and creating the port by March 1993. This version was written in C and compiled in the 65816 assembly language, making use of binary space partitioning rather than raycasting in order to give it speed. Carmack had to resize existing images to fit the SNES resolution. Nintendo insisted on censoring the game in accordance with their policies; this included first making all blood green and then finally removing it, removing Nazi imagery and German voice clips, and replacing enemy dogs with giant rats. The port was released in Japan on February 10, 1994, under the name Wolfenstein 3D: The Claw of Eisenfaust before being released in North America and Europe later that year. Using the source code of the SNES port, on a whim John Carmack later converted the game to run on the Atari Jaguar. Atari Corporation approved the conversion for publication and Carmack spent three weeks, assisted by Dave Taylor, improving the port's graphics and quality to what he later claimed was four times more detail than the DOS version. He also removed the changes that Nintendo had insisted on. The game itself, however, had to be slowed down to work properly on the console.
Wolfenstein 3D has also been ported to numerous other platforms. In 1993, Alternate Worlds Technology licensed Wolfenstein 3D and converted it into a virtual reality arcade game. The 1994 Acorn Archimedes port was done in UK by programmer Eddie Edwards and published by Powerslave Software. By 1994, a port for the Sega Mega Drive was under development by Imagineer, who intended to release it by September, but it was cancelled due to technical problems. The 1994 Classic Mac OS version of the game had three releases: The First Encounter, a shareware release; The Second Encounter, with 30 exclusive levels; and The Third Encounter, with all 60 levels from the DOS version. An Atari Lynx version of the game was offered earlier by Atari for id, but work on the port was never started, save for a few images. A 3DO version was released in October 1995. The Apple IIGS port was started in Fall 1994 by Vitesse with Heineman as the initial developer, with later graphics assistance by Ninjaforce Entertainment, but due to licensing problems with id it was not released until February 1998. An open source iOS port programmed by John Carmack himself was released in 2009. An unofficial port for the Game Boy Color was made in 2016. An Android port titled Wolfenstein 3D Touch (later renamed ECWolf) was released and published by Beloko Games. Other releases include the Game Boy Advance (2002), Xbox Live Arcade, and PlayStation Network. These ports' sound, graphics, and levels sometimes differ from the original. Many of the ports include only the Apogee episodes, but the iOS port includes Spear of Destiny, and a 2007 Steam release for PC, macOS, and Linux includes all of the FormGen episodes. Bethesda Softworks, whose parent company bought id Software in 2009, celebrated the 20th anniversary of Wolfenstein 3D's release by producing a free-to-play browser-based version of the game in 2012, though the website was removed a few years later.
## Reception
Id had no clear expectations for Wolfenstein's commercial reception, but hoped that it would make around US\$60,000 in its first month; the first royalty check from Apogee was instead for US\$100,000. The game was selling at a rate of 4,000 copies a month by mail order. PC Zone quoted a shareware distributor as saying Wolfenstein 3D was the top shareware seller of 1992. By the end of 1993, sales of the Apogee episodes of Wolfenstein 3D as well as Spear of Destiny had reached over 100,000 units each, with the Apogee game still selling strongly by the end of the year as its reach spread without newer retail titles to compete with it for shelf space. By mid-1994 150,000 shareware copies were registered and id had sold another 150,000 retail copies of Spear of Destiny; the company estimated that one million shareware copies were distributed worldwide. Over 20 percent of its sales were from outside of the US, despite the lack of any marketing or non-English description and despite the game being banned from sale in Germany due to its inclusion of Nazi symbols by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons in 1994, and again in 1997 for Spear of Destiny. Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu reviewed the game five months after release, describing it as: "View from the character's point of view: It's a real shooter. The game is easy to play, and it runs well ... This is the only game of its type." The Apogee episodes' sales vastly exceeded the shareware game sales record set by the developer's earlier Commander Keen series and provided id with a much higher profit margin than the sales of its retail counterpart; where Commander Keen games were bringing Apogee around \$10,000 a month, Wolfenstein 3D averaged \$200,000 per month for the first year and a half. The game sold 250,000 copies by 1995 and grossed \$2.5 million in revenue.
Wolfenstein 3D won the 1992 Best Arcade game award from Compute!, the 1992 Most Innovative Game and Best Action Game awards from VideoGames & Computer Entertainment, the 1992 Reader's Choice — Action/Arcade Game award from Game Bytes, the 1993 Best Action/Arcade Game, Best Entertainment Software, and People's Choice awards at the Shareware Industry Awards, the 1993 Best Action Game award from Computer Gaming World, and a Codie award from the Software Publishers Association for Best Action/Arcade Game. It was the first shareware title to win a Codie, and id (with six employees) became the smallest company to ever receive the award. Wolfenstein 3D was noted as one of the top games of the year at the 1993 Game Developers Conference.
Wolfenstein 3D was well received by reviewers upon its release. Chris Lombardi of Computer Gaming World praised the "sparse [but] gorgeous", "frighteningly realistic", and "extremely violent" graphics, as well as the immersive sound and music. Noting the violence, he warned "those sensitive to such things to stay home". Lombardi concluded that Wolfenstein 3D, alongside Ultima Underworld released two months prior, was "the first game technologically capable of creating a sufficient element of disbelief–suspension to emotionally immerse the player in a threatening environment", stating that they knew of no other game that could "evoke such intense psychological responses from its players". Wolfenstein twice received 5 out of 5 stars in Dragon in 1993; Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser termed it "definitely one of the best arcade games ever created for PC", highly praised the graphics and sound, and said that the "fast-paced action" could keep players enthralled for weeks if they were not concerned about the violence. Sandy Petersen, in the first "Eye of the Monitor" column, claimed that "there is nothing else quite like Wolfenstein" and that it had "evolved almost beyond recognition" from the original 1981 game. He enthusiastically praised the speed and gameplay, calling it "a fun game with lots of action" and "a fun, fairly mindless romp", though he did note that at higher difficulty settings or later levels it became extremely hard. The Spear of Destiny retail episode was also rated highly by Computer Gaming World's Bryan A. Walker, who praised the added enemy types, though he noted that it was essentially the same game as the shareware episodes. Formgen's Spear of Destiny mission packs "Return to Danger" and "Ultimate Challenge" were reviewed by Paul Hyman of Computer Gaming World, who praised the updated graphical details and sound, as well as the smooth gameplay, but noted its overall dated graphics and lack of gameplay changes from the original game.
The early ports of the game also received high reviews, though their sales have been described as "dismal". The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly called the Super NES version a good conversion that retained the good music, huge levels, and overall fun of the original game and dismissed the censoring in the version as inconsequential. In 1995, Total! ranked the game 84th on their "Top 100 SNES Games" list. Electronic Gaming Monthly rated the Jaguar version similarly to the Super NES version, commenting that the graphics and audio were superior to other versions of the game, but criticizing the faster movement of the player character as making it less fun to play. A GamePro review of the Jaguar port was highly complimentary, saying Wolfenstein 3D "set a new standard for PC gaming" and that the Jaguar version was the best to date, and better than the original due to its increased graphics and sound capabilities. A Next Generation review of the Jaguar version was less enthusiastic, terming it good but not up to the standards of newer games. Its review of the Macintosh version of the game was also mild, stating that "there isn't a staggering amount of freshness here, but the action is fast, deadly, and (surprise) addictive".
Major Mike of GamePro commended the 3DO version's complete absence of pixelation, fast scaling, "rousing" music, and high quality sound effects, but criticized the controls as overly sensitive. He concluded that the game, then over three years old, "still packs a punch as a first-person shooter". Wolfenstein 3D won GamePro's Best 3DO Game of 1995 award, beating the acclaimed The Need for Speed and D. Maximum, on the other hand, while stating that the 3DO port was better than the original and as good as the Jaguar version, felt that it was so aged compared to recent releases like Hexen: Beyond Heretic and the PlayStation version of Doom that a new port was pointless, with the game now "somewhat tiresome and very, very repetitive". A reviewer for Next Generation asserted that Wolfenstein 3D was "still as addictive as it ever was" but essentially agreed with Maximum, contending that anyone interested in first-person shooters would have either already played it on another platform or "moved on" to more advanced games in the genre. More modern reviews include one for the Xbox 360 port in 2009 by Ryan McCaffrey of Official Xbox Magazine, who heavily criticized it for non-existent enemy AI and bad level design and found it notably inferior to Doom, and one that same year by Daemon Hatfield of IGN, who gave the PlayStation Network release of the game a warm reception, saying that while it was "dated and flawed", it was "required playing for any first-person shooter fan".
## Legacy
Wolfenstein 3D has been called the "grandfather of 3D shooters", specifically first-person shooters, because it established the fast-paced action and technical prowess commonly expected in the genre and greatly increased the genre's popularity. It has also been called "the Citizen Kane of shooters". Although some prior computer shooting-based games existed, they were generally scrolling shooters, while Wolfenstein 3D helped move the market towards first-person shooters. It has also been credited with confirming shareware distribution as a serious and profitable business strategy at the time; VideoGames & Computer Entertainment claimed in September 1992 that the game "justified the existence of shareware", and in July 1993 Computer Gaming World claimed that it "almost single-handedly" demonstrated the viability of shareware as a method of publishing, leading to a wave of other shareware first-person shooters. The game's high revenue compared to prior, smaller 2D titles led Apogee as well as others in the shareware games industry to move towards larger, 3D titles built by larger development teams.
During development, id approached Sierra Entertainment, then one of the biggest companies in the industry and employer of several of their idols, with the goal of seeing if they could make a deal with the company. After viewing Commander Keen and an early version of Wolfenstein 3D, CEO Ken Williams offered to buy id Software for US\$2.5 million and turn it into an in-house development studio. The team was excited by the deal, but had felt there was a large culture clash between the two companies during their visit to Sierra and were hesitant to accept; Romero proposed asking for US\$100,000 in cash up front as part of the deal rather than solely accepting payment in Sierra stock as a measure of Williams's seriousness. Williams refused, which id interpreted to mean that Williams did not truly recognize the potential of Wolfenstein 3D and the company, and the deal fell through, causing id to decide to remain an independent company for the foreseeable future. By the end of 1993 just before the release of their next game, Doom, the success of Wolfenstein 3D led id to receive multiple calls every month from investment companies looking to make id a publicly-traded company, which were all turned down. In 1996, Computer Gaming World declared Wolfenstein 3D the 97th-best computer game ever released.
The game is also recognized as the principal cause for Germany banning video games that contain certain types of symbols and imagery from extremist groups like Nazis under its Strafgesetzbuch section 86a up through 2018. Section 86a had "social adequacy" allowances for works of art, but in 1998, a High District Frankfurt Court case evaluating the Nazi imagery within Wolfenstein 3D determined that video games did not fall under this allowance. The court ruled that because video games drew younger audiences, "this could lead to them growing up with these symbols and insignias and thereby becoming used to them, which again could make them more vulnerable for ideological manipulation by national socialist ideas". Up through 2018, the Germany software ratings board, the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (USK) refused to rate any game that included inappropriate symbols and imagery, effectively banning the game for sale within the country. By May 2018, a new court ruling was made in response to a parody web browser game, in which the Public Prosecutor's Office confirmed there were no breaches of the law in the game's content. Following this, the ban was reversed by the German government in August, having determined that the Wolfenstein 3D decision was outdated since the USK now included age ratings alongside other content warnings, and that video games should be considered as art under the social adequacy allowance. In November 2019, Wolfenstein 3D was formally struck from the "Index", the list of games banned from sale in Germany.
After the game's release, id Software licensed the engine to other developers, like the Commander Keen engine before it, as part of a series of engine licensing deals that id has made throughout its history; games using the Wolfenstein 3D engine or derivatives of it include Blake Stone, the Capstone Software games Corridor 7 and Operation Body Count, as well as Super 3D Noah's Ark. Apogee intended to produce an expansion pack in 1993 titled Rise of the Triad: Wolfenstein 3D Part II, designed by Tom Hall using the Wolfenstein 3D engine, but during development the game was changed into a stand-alone title with an enhanced engine, Rise of the Triad. Additionally, Softdisk produced Catacomb Abyss using the prototype Wolfenstein 3D engine from Catacomb 3-D as part of the Catacomb Adventure Series trilogy of sequels. Although Wolfenstein 3D was not designed to be editable or modified, players developed character and level editors to create original alterations to the game's content. John Carmack and Romero, who had played numerous mods of other games, were delighted, and overrode any concerns about copyright issues by the others. The modding efforts of Wolfenstein players led id Software to explicitly design later titles like Doom and Quake to be easily modifiable by players, even including the map editing tools id Software used with the games. The source code for the original Wolfenstein 3D engine was released by id in 1995; when making the 2009 iOS port, Carmack used some of the enhancements to the engine made by fans after its release. The game's technical achievements also led to numerous imitators such as Ken's Labyrinth, Nitemare 3D, The Terminator: Rampage, Terminal Terror and The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki, among others.
Although id Software did not develop another Wolfenstein game, as their development focus shifted to Doom shortly after release, and has never returned to the series, multiple Wolfenstein titles have been produced by other companies, sometimes using game engines developed by id. The first of these newer Wolfenstein games was Return to Castle Wolfenstein in 2001, a reboot of the series, and the most recent titles are the 2019 games Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot.
|
5,230,443 |
Banksia ericifolia
| 1,172,666,786 |
Woody shrub native to Australia
|
[
"Banksia taxa by scientific name",
"Flora of New South Wales",
"Garden plants of Australia",
"Plants described in 1782",
"Shrubs"
] |
Banksia ericifolia, the heath-leaved banksia, or lantern banksia, is a species of woody shrub of the family Proteaceae native to Australia. It grows in two separate regions of Central and Northern New South Wales east of the Great Dividing Range. Well known for its orange or red autumn inflorescences, which contrast with its green fine-leaved heath-like foliage, it is a medium to large shrub that can reach 6 m (20 ft) high and wide, though is usually half that size. In exposed heathlands and coastal areas, it is more often 1–2 m (3.3–6.6 ft).
Banksia ericifolia was one of the original Banksia species collected by Joseph Banks around Botany Bay in 1770 and was named by Carl Linnaeus the Younger, son of Carl Linnaeus, in 1782. A distinctive plant, it has split into two subspecies: Banksia ericifolia subspecies ericifolia of the Sydney region and Banksia ericifolia subspecies macrantha of the New South Wales Far North Coast which was recognized in 1996.
Banksia ericifolia has been widely grown in Australian gardens on the east coast for many years, and is used to a limited extent in the cut flower industry. Compact dwarf cultivars such as Banksia 'Little Eric' have become more popular in recent years with the trend toward smaller gardens.
## Description
Banksia ericifolia grows as a large shrub up to 6 metres (20 feet) in height, though often smaller, around 1–2 metres (3.5–6.5 ft), in exposed places such as coastal or mountain heathlands. The grey-coloured bark is smooth and fairly thin with lenticels; however it can thicken significantly with age. The linear dark green leaves are small and narrow, 9–20 mm (1⁄4–3⁄4 in) long and up to 1 mm wide, generally with two small teeth at the tips. The leaves are crowded and alternately arranged on the branches. New growth generally occurs in summer and is an attractive lime green colour.
Flowering is in autumn, or in winter in cooler areas; the inflorescences are flower spikes 7–22 cm (2.8–8.7 in) high and 5 cm (2.0 in) broad or so. Each individual flower consists of a tubular perianth made up of four fused tepals, and one long wiry style. Characteristic of the taxonomic section in which it is placed, the styles are hooked rather than straight. The styles' ends are initially trapped inside the upper perianth parts, but break free at anthesis, when the flowers open. The spikes are red or gold in overall colour, with styles golden, orange, orange-red or burgundy. Some unusual forms have striking red styles on a whitish perianth. Very occasionally, forms with all yellow inflorescences are seen. Though not terminal, the flower spikes are fairly prominently displayed emerging from the foliage; they arise from two- to three-year-old nodes.
Old flower spikes fade to brown and then grey with age; old flower parts soon fall, revealing numerous small dark grey to dull black finely furred follicles. Oblong in shape and 15–20 mm (9⁄16–13⁄16 in) in diameter, the follicles are ridged on each valve and remain closed until burnt by fire. Banksia ericifolia responds to fire by seeding, the parent plant being killed. As plants take several years to flower in the wild, it is very sensitive to too-frequent burns and has been eliminated in some areas where these occur. With time and the production of more cones with seed-containing follicles, however, plants can store up to 16,500 seeds at eight years of age. Some plants produce multiple flower spikes, possibly of varying sizes, from a single point of origin.
## Taxonomy
B. ericifolia was first collected at Botany Bay on 29 April 1770, by Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Daniel Solander, naturalists on the Endeavour during Lieutenant (later Captain) James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific Ocean. Solander coined the (unpublished) binomial name Leucadendrum ericaefolium in Banks' Florilegium. However, the species was not published until April 1782, when Carl Linnaeus the Younger described the first four Banksia species in his Supplementum Plantarum. Linnaeus distinguished the species by their leaf shapes and named them accordingly. Thus the species with leaves reminiscent of heather (at the time classified in the genus Erica) was given the specific name ericaefolia, from the Latin erica, meaning "heather", and folium, meaning "leaf". This spelling was later adjusted to "ericifolia"; thus the full name for the species is Banksia ericifolia L.f., with the initials L.f. identifying Carolus Linnaeus the Younger.
While many Banksia species have undergone much taxonomic change since publication, the distinctive B. ericifolia has remained largely unchanged as a species concept. Consequently, the species has no taxonomic synonyms; it does, however, have three nomenclatural synonyms. The first synonym, Banksia phylicaefolia Salisb, was published by the English botanist Richard Anthony Salisbury in his 1796 Prodromus stirpium in horto ad Chapel Allerton vigentium. It was intended as a replacement name for B. ericaefolia, but Salisbury gave no reason why such a replacement was necessary. The name was therefore superfluous, and hence illegitimate. The second synonym was create in 1891, when Otto Kuntze, in his Revisio Generum Plantarum, rejected the generic name Banksia L.f., on the grounds that the name Banksia had previously been published in 1776 as Banksia J.R.Forst & G.Forst, referring to the genus now known as Pimelea. Kuntze proposed Sirmuellera as an alternative, referring to this species as Sirmuellera ericifolia. For the same reason, James Britten transferred the species to the genus Isostylis as Isostylis ericifolia in 1905. These applications of the principle of priority were largely ignored, and Banksia L.f. was formally conserved and Sirmuellera rejected in 1940.
A recent change to the species' taxonomy is the recognition, in 1981, of an infraspecific taxon. The existence of different forms of B. ericifolia was first recognised in 1979 by the amateur botanist Alf Salkin, who noted three distinct forms of the species, with one being a possible hybrid with Banksia spinulosa var. cunninghamii. Salkin gave his northern form the provisional infraspecific name "microphylla", but when Alex George published a formal description in his 1981 The genus Banksia L.f. (Proteaceae), he named it B. ericifolia var. macrantha. In 1996, it was promoted to subspecific rank as B. ericifolia subsp. macrantha.
### Placement within Banksia
Banksia ericifolia has traditionally been described as lying within series Spicigerae of Banksia, together with Banksia spinulosa and various western Hairpin-like Banksias such as B. seminuda and B. brownii. This series is placed in Banksia sect. Oncostylis according to Alex George's taxonomy of Banksia, but directly into Banksia subg. Banksia in Thiele's arrangement based on cladistic analysis. Kevin Thiele additionally placed it in a subseries Ericifoliae, but this was not supported by George.
Under George's taxonomic arrangement of Banksia, B. ericifolia's placement may be summarised as follows:
Genus Banksia
: Subgenus Banksia
: : Section Banksia
: : Section Coccinea
: : Section Oncostylis
: : : Series Spicigerae
: : : : B. spinulosa - B. ericifolia - B. verticillata - B. seminuda - B. littoralis - B. occidentalis - B. brownii
: : : Series Tricuspidae
: : : Series Dryandroidae
: : : Series Abietinae
: Subgenus Isostylis
Molecular research by American botanist Austin Mast suggests that B. spinulosa and B. ericifolia may be more closely related to Banksia ser. Salicinae, with includes Banksia integrifolia and its relatives.
In 2005, Mast, Eric Jones and Shawn Havery published the results of their cladistic analyses of DNA sequence data for Banksia. They inferred a phylogeny markedly different from the accepted taxonomic arrangement, including finding Banksia to be paraphyletic with respect to Dryandra. A full new taxonomic arrangement was not published at the time, but early in 2007 Mast and Australian botanist Kevin Thiele initiated a rearrangement by transferring Dryandra to Banksia, and publishing B. subg. Spathulatae for the species having spoon-shaped cotyledons; in this way they also redefined the autonym B. subg. Banksia. 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. ericifolia is placed in B. subg. Spathulatae.
Hybrids with B. spinulosa var. spinulosa have been recorded in the wild, at Pigeon House Mountain in Morton National Park. Banksia 'Giant Candles' was a chance garden hybrid between B. ericifolia and B. spinulosa var. cunninghamii.
### Subspecies
Two geographically distinct forms are recognised:
Banksia ericifolia subsp. ericifolia: The nominate race is found in the Sydney basin, south to the Illawarra and north to Collaroy, as well as the Blue Mountains. The seedling leaves have 2–6 teeth on each margin, while the perianths are 19–22 mm (3⁄4–3⁄4 in) long and pistils are 30–35 mm (1+1⁄4–1+1⁄2 in) long. Salkin noted that this subspecies often grew in association with Banksia spinulosa var. cunninghamii and that there were plants with longer leaves some 20–25 mm (3⁄4–1 in) long with entire, curled margins. He gave them the name "longifolia" and suspected these may have been hybrids.
Banksia ericifolia subsp. macrantha: The northern race is found on the New South Wales north coast, from Crowdy Head northwards to the Queensland border. Described as a distinct subspecies in 1996 by Alex George from material he collected at Byron Bay in 1975, it is distinguished by finer foliage, more crowded leaves and larger flowers, with the perianths 26–28 mm (1.0–1.1 in) long and pistils 46–48 mm (1+3⁄4–2 in) long. The seedling leaves have one, or occasionally two teeth on each margin. Salkin observed that the inflorescences tended to be terminal rather than axial, and others have noted them to be sometimes taller than the nominate subspecies. Crowdy Bay, in particular, hosts specimens with spikes up to 26 cm (10 in) in height.
### Name and symbolism
In 1992, B. ericifolia was adopted as the official plant of Sydney, and is sometimes seen in amenity plantings and parks around the city. It was known as wadanggari (pron. "wa-tang-gre") to the local Eora and Darug inhabitants of the Sydney basin.
## Distribution and habitat
In nature, the variety ericifolia is found on acidic sandstone-based soils; either in elevated heathland within 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) of the coast around the Sydney basin, from Collaroy south to Jervis Bay, or elevated sandstone soils in mountainous areas such as the Blue Mountains and the Budawangs. These heathlands are often moist, with access to some form of underground water, and can even be quite swampy. It can form dense thickets with the Dagger Hakea (Hakea teretifolia) and Scrub She-oak (Allocasuarina distyla). Other plants it associates with include the Coast Tea-tree (Leptospermum laevigatum) and smaller plants such as Woollsia pungens. The inflorescences are a feature of autumn bushwalking in sandstone areas, such as the Kings Tableland walk in the Blue Mountains, Jennifer Street Boardwalk in Little Bay, and Royal National Park.
The northern subspecies macrantha is found in two distinct regions on the far north coast of New South Wales; the first from Crowdy Bay on the Mid North Coast northwards to Hat Head National Park north of Port Macquarie, and then from Yuraygir National Park north to Kingscliff just south of the Queensland border. This variety is more strictly coastal with most populations being found within two kilometres of the coast, or in swampy areas. It may be associated with Banksia oblongifolia.
## Ecology
Like other banksias, B. ericifolia plays host to a wide variety of pollinators and is a vital source of nectar in autumn, when other flowers are scarce. It has been the subject of a number of studies on pollination. A 1998 study in Bundjalung National Park in Northern New South Wales found that B. ericifolia inflorescences are foraged by a variety of small mammals, including marsupials such as yellow-footed antechinus (Antechinus flavipes), and rodents such as pale field rat (Rattus tunneyi) and grassland mosaic-tailed rat (Melomys burtoni). These animals carry pollen loads comparable to those of nectarivorous birds, making them effective pollinators. A 1978 study found bush rat (Rattus fuscipes) to bear large amounts of pollen from B. ericifolia and suggested the hooked styles may play a role in pollination by mammals. Other visitors recorded include Western honey bee (Apis mellifera).
A great many bird species have been observed visiting this Banksia species. A 1985 study in the Sydney area of B. ericifolia var. ericifolia found numerous birds visiting the inflorescences, including the honeyeaters eastern spinebill (Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris), white-cheeked honeyeater (Phylidonyris nigra), New Holland honeyeater (Phylidonyris novaehollandiae), white-naped honeyeater (Melithreptus lunatus), yellow-faced honeyeater (Lichenostomus chrysops), red wattlebird (Anthochaera carunculata) and little wattlebird (Anthochaera chrysoptera), as well as the Silvereye (Zosterops lateralis). The beautiful firetail (Stagonopleura bella) also associates with this species. Some mammals were recorded in this study but were found to bear no pollen. Exclusion of certain pollinators showed that birds and insects were important for fertilisation. Additional species seen in The Banksia Atlas survey include white-eared honeyeater (Lichenostomus leucotis), white-plumed honeyeater (Lichenostomus penicillatus), crescent honeyeater (Phylidonyris pyrrhoptera), noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala), and species of friarbird for B. ericifolia var. ericifolia and brown honeyeater (Lichmera indistincta), tawny-crowned honeyeater (Gliciphila melanops) and black-faced cuckoo-shrike (Coracina novaehollandiae) for B. ericifolia var. macrantha.
Insects recovered from inflorescences include the banksia boring moth (Arotrophora canthelias), younger instars of which eat flower and bract parts before tunneling into the rachis as they get older and boring into follicles and eating seeds. This tunneling itself damages the architecture of the spike and prevents seed development. Other seed predators include unidentified species of moth of the genus Cryptophasa, as well as Scieropepla rimata, Chalarotona intabescens and Chalarotona melipnoa, Brachmia trinervis, Carposina hyperlopha and an unidentified weevil species.
Like most other Proteaceae, B. ericifolia 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, allowing nutrient uptake in low-nutrient soils such as the phosphorus-deficient native soils of Australia. The species lacks a lignotuber, and so is killed by fire and regenerates from seed.
Banksia ericifolia depends on fire for regeneration; if fires are too infrequent, populations age and eventually die out. However, too-frequent fires also threaten this species, which takes around six years to reach maturity and flower. One study estimated an optimum fire interval of 15–30 years. For a large part of its distribution Banksia ericifolia grows near areas of human habitation on Australia's eastern coastline. Bushland near urban areas is subject to both arson and prescribed burns, drastically reducing fire intervals and resulting in the disappearance of the species from some areas. The hotter a fire the more quickly seed is released; timing of rains afterwards is also critical for seedling survival.
Banksia ericifolia is listed in Part 1 Group 1 of Schedule 13 of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974; this means that as a common and secure species it is exempted from any licensing or tagging requirements under the 2002–2005 management plan to minimise and regulate the use of protected and threatened plants in the cut-flower industry in New South Wales.
## Cultivation
Banksia ericifolia was one of the first Banksia species to be cultivated, having been introduced into cultivation in England in 1788. By 1804, it had flowered in several collections. That year a painting of the plant by Sydenham Edwards was featured in Curtis's Botanical Magazine, accompanied by text describing the species as "a handsome shrub [that] thrives freely".
Banksia ericifolia inflorescences attract a variety of birds to the garden. Tough enough to be used as a street plant in parts of Sydney, B. ericifolia is a fairly easy plant to grow in the conditions it likes, namely a sandy, well drained soil and a sunny aspect. It requires extra water over dryer periods until established, which may take up to two years, as it comes from an area with rainfall in predominantly warmer months. It is resistant to Phytophthora cinnamomi dieback, like most eastern banksias As it grows naturally on acid soils, Banksia ericifolia is particularly sensitive to iron deficiency. Known as chlorosis, this problem manifests as yellowing of new leaves with preservation of green veins; it can occur on plants grown in soils of high pH. This can happen especially where soil contains quantities of cement, either as landfill or building foundations, and can be treated with iron chelate or sulfate.
Flowering may take some years from seed; a minimum of four years is average. Buying an advanced plant may hasten this process, as will getting a cutting-grown plant. Banksia ericifolia can be propagated easily by seed, and is one of the (relatively) easier banksias to propagate by cutting. Named cultivars are by necessity propagated by cuttings as this ensures that the plant produced bears the same attributes as the original plant.
Regular pruning is important to give the plant an attractive habit and prevent it from becoming leggy. Hard-pruning below green growth is not advisable with this banksia; since it lacks a lignotuber, it does not have dormant buds below the bark that respond to pruning or fire and therefore is unable to sprout from old wood as readily as commonly cultivated lignotuberous species, such as B. spinulosa and B. robur.
### Cultivars
For many years the horticulture industry focussed on registered selections of Banksia spinulosa, but since the late 1990s more and more cultivars of Banksia ericifolia have come on the market, including colour variants and dwarf forms. The latter are particularly attractive as the original plant may reach 6 metres in height, and the new cultivars help enthusiasts choose a plant that is right for their conditions and tastes. Banksia ericifolia is also grown for the cut flower industry in Australia, though not to the degree that the western Australian species such as B. coccinea and B. menziesii are.
There are a number of commercial varieties available from Australian retail nurseries; however none have yet been registered under plant breeders' rights legislation, and only one ('Limelight') is registered with the Australian Cultivar Registration Authority. The lack of official names has led to some varieties bearing several different names.
- Banksia ericifolia 'Bronzed Aussie' is a white-budded terminal-flowering form to 2 m with bronzed foliage; the inflorescences have honey-coloured pistils. It has been propagated by Victorian nurseryman Rod Parsons of Carawah Nursery in Hoddles Creek. A new release in 2003, its provenance is unknown; seed had been given to Rod's father by an SGAP member many years ago.
- Banksia ericifolia 'Golden Girl' is a golden yellow-flowered form which grows to 1.5–1.8 m (4.9–5.9 ft) in height with blue-grey foliage. It has hidden wide fat flowers to 8 cm high and has been propagated by Rod Parsons of Carawah Nursery. Released in 2003, its provenance is unknown (seed donated to Rod's father by an SGAP member many years ago.)
- Banksia ericifolia 'Kanangra Gold', propagated by Kuranga Nursery in Melbourne, is a gold flowered form to 4 m (13 ft) from the Kanangra-Boyd region of the Blue Mountains. It is bushy and flowers are much paler than the regular orange or red forms.
- Banksia ericifolia 'Limelight', registered with Australian Cultivar Registration Authority (ACRA) in 1987, is a large plant to 5 m (16 ft) with bright lime green foliage and orange blossoms. It is seldom seen due to the current focus on smaller forms for smaller gardens.
- Banksia ericifolia 'Little Eric' is a dwarf form reaching 1 or 2 m (3.3 or 6.6 ft); the inflorescences have maroon styles and whitish perianth. It is propagated by Richard Anderson of Merricks Nursery on the Mornington Peninsula southeast of Melbourne, the original having arisen as a chance garden seedling.
- Banksia ericifolia 'Purple Pygmy', also called B. 'Port Wine', is a dwarf form propagated by Kuranga Nursery that grows to 1 m (3.3 ft) with purplish foliage with claret flowers. It only flowers rarely and is difficult to propagate. Also, due to low demand it is only propagated in low numbers.
- Banksia ericifolia 'Red Rover' is a dwarf cultivar reaching 1.8 m (5.9 ft) with a more open habit than other forms of similar size. This form has lime green foliage and scarlet-red flowers and was propagated by Rod Parsons of Carawah Nursery from a garden selection and released in 2004.
- Banksia ericifolia 'St Pauls' is a dwarf form that grows to 2 m (6.6 ft) with conspicuous red inflorescences which has been available from time to time from Cranebrook Nursery in Sydney's western suburbs. It was originally propagated from a plant cultivated at St Pauls' secondary school (a local high school).
- Banksia ericifolia 'White Candles/Christmas Candles', also known as B. ericifolia 'Ruby Clusters', originated from a plant growing in the Sutherland Shire in Sydney's south. It has an unusual red style/white body colour combination somewhat reminiscent of B. coccinea. The buds are white and contrast with the red styles that emerge through them. It is an open shrub to 3–4 m (9.8–13.1 ft).
- Banksia ericifolia macrantha 'Creamed Honey', so called because its flowers are the colour of creamed honey, is a pale flowered variant originally found at Crowdy Head on the New South Wales north coast. Propagated by Kuranga nursery, it grows to 4 or 5 m (13 or 16 ft) with a more open habit. It is notable in that it is the only cultivar of the northern subspecies of Banksia ericifolia currently available.
|
36,715,953 |
Red (Taylor Swift album)
| 1,173,718,467 |
2012 studio album by Taylor Swift
|
[
"2012 albums",
"Albums produced by Butch Walker",
"Albums produced by Dan Wilson (musician)",
"Albums produced by Dann Huff",
"Albums produced by Jacknife Lee",
"Albums produced by Jeff Bhasker",
"Albums produced by Max Martin",
"Albums produced by Nathan Chapman (record producer)",
"Albums produced by Shellback (record producer)",
"Albums produced by Taylor Swift",
"Big Machine Records albums",
"Canadian Country Music Association Top Selling Album albums",
"Country albums by American artists",
"Pop albums by American artists",
"Rock albums by American artists",
"Taylor Swift albums"
] |
Red is the fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. It was released on October 22, 2012, by Big Machine Records. The album's title refers to the tumultuous, "red" emotions Swift experienced during the album's conception; its songs discuss the complex and conflicting feelings resulting from fading romance.
Hoping to experiment with new sounds beyond her previous albums' country pop style, Swift engaged new producers Dann Huff, Max Martin, Shellback, Jeff Bhasker, Dan Wilson, Jacknife Lee, Butch Walker, alongside her long-time collaborator Nathan Chapman. The record combines styles of pop, country, and rock, with eclectic elements including arena rock, Britrock, dance-pop, and dubstep. Big Machine promoted Red as a country album but many critics disputed this categorization and deemed it a pop record. The album was supported with seven singles, including the US Billboard Hot 100 number-one lead single "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" and the Mainstream Top 40 number-one single "I Knew You Were Trouble".
In the US, Red spent seven weeks atop the Billboard 200—making Swift the first female artist and the second act since the Beatles to have three consecutive albums each spend at least six weeks at number one—and was certified seven-times Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It topped the charts and received multi-platinum certifications in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The album received nominations for Album of the Year at the 2013 Country Music Association Awards, and Album of the Year and Best Country Album at the 2014 Grammy Awards. Swift promoted the album with the Red Tour (2013–2014), which grossed \$150 million.
Contemporaneous critics praised Swift's songwriting in Red but they were divided on the album's sonic range; praise was directed at the album's versatility but criticism targeted its inconsistency. Retrospectively, many critics regard Red as Swift's best album and a transitional record bridging her country roots to mainstream pop. It appeared in publications' lists of the best albums of the 2010s decade and ranked at number 99 in the 2020 revision of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Following a dispute regarding the ownership of Swift's back catalog, she re-recorded Red and released it as Red (Taylor's Version) on November 12, 2021.
## Background
Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift released her third studio album, Speak Now, in October 2010. Rolling Stone reported in 2020 that Swift wrote the music to Speak Now alone to prove to critics she was capable; Swift herself says it happened by accident as she would write songs in early morning hours and did not have a co-writer around before she finished the songs. Speak Now, which was co-produced by Swift and her longtime collaborator Nathan Chapman, expands on her characteristic country pop sound with increasingly frequent elements of radio-friendly pop crossover, which are evident on its predecessor, Fearless (2008). It incorporates various rock styles, including pop rock, arena rock, and new wave rock. Speak Now was the fastest-selling digital album by a female artist, with 278,000 downloads in a week, earning Swift an entry in the 2010 Guinness World Records. At the 54th Grammy Awards in 2012, the album was nominated for Best Country Album, and its single "Mean" won Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance.
## Recording and production
After the release of Speak Now, Swift planned to continue collaborating with Chapman for its follow-up. By October 2011, she had written around 25 songs. Executives at Swift's label Big Machine congratulated her on having finalized the album within one year. Swift said she had been repeating the same songwriting process she used for Speak Now, which diminished her creativity. She sought to collaborate with Chapman and new producers to venture outside of her comfort zone of writing songs alone. While Speak Now was Swift's statement as a songwriter, she envisioned her fourth studio album as a statement of her "thirst for learning". She reworked the new album while touring Speak Now.
Swift, aiming to experiment with as many styles as she could, decided her fourth studio album would not follow one coherent genre. To this end, she recruited musicians whose works she admired, hoping to learn from them. Although Swift wanted to experiment with various musical styles, she prioritized the lyrics over the production and strove to capture her emotions, as she had done on her previous songs. Songwriting would start by identifying an emotion with a song, and production would follow. On songs Swift co-wrote, she first presented her co-writers with the feelings she had been going through, played a rough demo on her guitar, and asked for their ideas on ways to better convey the story. Each song's production corresponded to the emotion it portrayed, resulting in an eclectic mix of styles.
The first song written for the album was "All Too Well", which Swift began writing in February 2011 during a rehearsal of the Speak Now tour. Having recently ended a relationship, Swift began ad-libbing self-written lyrics about heartbreak on a four-chord guitar riff as her touring band spontaneously played backing instruments. A critical point during a recording session with Chapman was the song "Red", on which her creativity "started wandering to all the places [she] could go". Big Machine's president Scott Borchetta overheard Chapman's original production and suggested a more pop-oriented sound. After several failed attempts to get the desired sound, Swift asked Borchetta to recruit Swedish producer Max Martin, whose ability to "just land a chorus" for his chart-topping pop songs intrigued Swift. Martin and his frequent collaborator Shellback produced the songs "22", "I Knew You Were Trouble", and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", all of which are characterized by a synth-driven electronic production. The final version of "Red" was produced by Swift, Chapman, and Dann Huff. Huff, who had produced for several country artists, worked with Swift and Chapman on "Starlight" and "Begin Again".
Another new collaborator was Jeff Bhasker, whose production of "We Are Young" (2011) by indie band Fun captivated Swift by its drum instrumentation. Bhasker produced two songs: "Holy Ground" and "The Lucky One". Swift worked with Butch Walker on the song "Everything Has Changed", a duet with English singer Ed Sheeran. She admired Walker for the way "he creates this really organic but emotionally charged music". "Treacherous" was produced by Dan Wilson, whose work with his band Semisonic inspired Swift. She engaged musicians Gary Lightbody and Jacknife Lee of the Irish-Scottish band Snow Patrol, saying, "they can just hit you when they are singing about loss or longing". Lee produced "The Last Time", on which Lightbody sings. Swift wrote more than 30 songs for the album, 16 of which made the final cut of the standard edition. Of those 16 tracks, Swift was the sole writer of 10 and co-wrote the other six.
## Composition
### Music
Red spans genres and departs from the dominant country-pop sound of Swift's past albums. It incorporates eclectic elements of styles such as dance-pop, dubstep, Britrock, and arena rock. The instruments range from acoustic to electronic synths and drum machines. Swift called Red's diverse musical styles a "metaphor for how messy a real breakup is" and described it as her "only true breakup album". Its first half consists of country and pop songs intertwined with each other; three tracks—"22", "I Knew You Were Trouble", and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together"—embrace a pure pop production that incorporates electronic vocal processing and hip-hop-influenced bass drums. The rock stylings of Speak Now expand on tracks "State of Grace" and "Holy Ground", which musicologist James E. Perone found reminiscent of 1980s arena rock. Other tracks including "I Almost Do", "Stay Stay Stay", "Sad Beautiful Tragic", and "Begin Again", embrace the country sound of Swift's earlier music.
Critics were divided on the album's genre classification. Jon Dolan's review for Rolling Stone appeared in their column for country music, but he described Swift's musical foundation as "post-country rock". Some reviewers commented that Red blurred the divide between country and pop, but others called it a straightforward pop album with little trace of country. Journalists, including the Los Angeles Times' Randall Roberts and The New York Times' Jon Caramanica, wrote that Red signifies Swift's inevitable move in mainstream pop to broaden her audience. The former said much of the album could perform well on commercial country radio but at its core, it is "perfectly rendered American popular music" with influences from modern trends; the latter remarked Swift as "a pop star in a country context". For American Songwriter's Jewly Hight, debating Swift's genre was pointless because her work is meant for a young audience who thinks of music "iPod shuffle-fluidly".
### Lyrics and themes
Although Red transcends Swift's country roots, her storytelling ability, nurtured by this country background, remains intact in her songwriting. The album's title refers to what Swift termed the tumultuous, extreme, "red" emotions that were evoked by unhealthy romantic relationships she was experiencing during the album's conception phase; such emotions ranged "from intense love, intense frustration, jealousy, confusion" and shaped the lyrics. Pitchforks Brad Nelson summed up the album's theme as disappearances, from lost romance and relationships to Swift's old country sound. For Nelson, this serves as the influence for the album cover, on which Swift is looking downward with her face partially shadowed from her brimmed hat. Reviewers observed the similarities between the cover of Red and that of Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell's 1971 album Blue, which inspired Swift's songwriting on Red.
Whereas Swift's previous songs contain fantasy-driven narratives with happy endings, Red realizes the uneasy reality of how a seemingly enduring relationship can painfully end. In the album's liner notes, Swift quotes a line from Pablo Neruda's poetry collection Tonight I Can Write (The Saddest Lines), "Love is so short, forgetting is so long", which she deems simultaneously relatable and simple, appropriate for the album's overarching theme. Critics observed a sign of maturity in Swift's perspectives and recognized additional themes—wide-eyed optimism, insecurity about one's perceived image, and the pressure of stardom. Hints of sex, absent from Swift's earlier music, are apparent on Red, which coincided with her outgrowing of her public image as an innocent sweetheart.
The A.V. Club's Michael Gallucci acknowledged the deeper observations of Red's songs but did not appreciate their criticism of Swift's ex-lovers. NPR's J. English, meanwhile, noted the album portrays Swift at her most vulnerable and maturity for recognizing her coming of age in "plaintive, reflective tones". Billboard similarly noted the album's portrayal of maturity through vulnerability, saying "she most effectively lays bare her emotional life in all its messy complexity". Most of the songs on Red were inspired by one ex-boyfriend who, according to Swift, contacted her after listening to the album and described the experience as "bittersweet".
### Songs
Red opens with "State of Grace", an arena-rock song featuring chiming guitars, dynamic drums, and lyrics about the tumultuous feelings that are evoked by the first sights of love. The title track, "Red", incorporates acoustic banjo, guitars, and electronic voice manipulation. It combines soft rock, country, and mainstream pop. Its refrain relates the stages of love to colors; "losing him" is blue, "missing him" is dark gray, and "loving him" is red. The third track, "Treacherous", begins with slow guitar strumming and percussion and gradually builds up, with lyrics about fighting to protect a dangerous relationship. "I Knew You Were Trouble", which Swift said was a completely new style for her, begins with a pop-rock production before building into a dubstep-tinged refrain with aggressive synthesizer backing. Its narrator blames herself for a toxic relationship that has ended. Critics considered the track Swift's most radical sonic change on Red, with Perone viewing the syncopated bass drums as exemplary of her experimenting with hip hop, and Caramanica saying the dubstep drop was "a wrecking ball, changing the course not just of the song but also of Ms. Swift's career".
Critics regarded "All Too Well" as the album's emotional centerpiece. It features a slow-burning production blending country, folk, and arena rock, with overdubs of acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, drums, and background vocals. The lyrics chronicle a lost relationship from the peak of romance to the lingering memories after it has ended. The imagery of a scarf left in a drawer became a symbol associated with the song; according to critic Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone, "no other song does such a stellar job of showing off her ability to blow up a trivial little detail into a legendary heartache". "All Too Well" is followed by "22", a pop song featuring pulsing synthesizers that recall 1980s pop. The lyrics of "22" celebrate the joys of being young and confident while acknowledging the uncertainty of adulthood, and the heartache the narrator and her friends endured in the past. "I Almost Do" is a country-pop and soft-rock ballad featuring gentle guitar strums. In the song, a narrator struggles to decide if she should rekindle with a former lover. It is followed by "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", in which the narrator promises her ex-lover they will never rekindle their broken relationship. The song is a gleeful dance-pop tune with pulsing synthesizers, processed guitar sounds, and hip-hop-influenced bass drums.
"Stay Stay Stay" is a fast-tempo song combining country with elements of 1980s pop. It is instrumented with a toy piano, ukulele, mandolin, and hand claps, and has lyrics about two lovers trying to reconcile after a fight. "The Last Time", a duet with Gary Lightbody, has a melancholic production backed by string instruments; Perone compared its production with the music of late-1970s and early-1980s rock bands but with a muted texture. Both Swift and Lightbody sing lead vocals; in the first verse, Lightbody sings about his character's perspective on a failing long-term relationship and in the second verse, Swift presents her character's view. The refrain is backed by strings and brass, intensifying the emotional tension between the two. In "Holy Ground", a narrator reminisces about an absent lover and the fleeting moments of their past. It is a country rock and heartland rock track with persistent drums and a recurring guitar riff. The next track, "Sad Beautiful Tragic", is a melancholic, slow, folk-oriented waltz about a doomed love affair.
The soft-rock "The Lucky One" is a cautionary tale about the perils of celebrity. Narrated from a third-person perspective, it references the story of a successful singer who "chose the rose garden over Madison Square". "Everything Has Changed" featuring Ed Sheeran is a stripped-back guitar ballad about a blossoming new romance, and "Starlight" is an uptempo, dance-pop song about Robert F. and Ethel Kennedy's relationship. The standard edition's final track, "Begin Again", is a gentle country song expressing a narrator's vulnerability post-breakup and willingness to start over. Perone noted Red, after exploring other genres, concludes with a country song, confirming the importance of Swift's musical roots.
The deluxe edition of Red includes the extra original songs "The Moment I Knew", "Come Back ... Be Here", and "Girl at Home"; original demo recordings of "Treacherous" and "Red", and an acoustic version of "State of Grace". "The Moment I Knew" is a somber piano ballad and narrates a story of a woman's birthday party from which, despite a Christmas theme and good friends, her boyfriend is absent, signaling a failing relationship. The 2000s-adult-contemporary-oriented "Come Back... Be Here" has lyrics about a long-distance relationship with few chances to endure. "Girl at Home", a song combining country with 1980s music elements, is about a woman's feelings when her boyfriend is out and flirting with other women.
## Release and promotion
### Marketing
Swift and Big Machine implemented an extensive marketing plan for Red. On August 13, 2012, Swift announced the album's details through a live webchat via Google Hangouts, and released the lead single, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", which was her first number-one song on the US Billboard Hot 100. An alternative version of "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" was released to US country radio; it spent ten weeks atop Hot Country Songs. On September 22, Swift announced on Good Morning America a four-week song release countdown from September 24 until the album's release week. The four songs—"Begin Again", "Red", "I Knew You Were Trouble", and "State of Grace"—were released for digital download onto the iTunes Store. "Begin Again", which peaked at number seven on the US Billboard Hot 100, was later released as a single to US country radio on October 1, 2012.
Both the standard and deluxe versions of Red were released on October 22, 2012. In the US, the standard edition was available in digital and physical formats, and the deluxe edition containing six extra tracks was available exclusively for physical purchase at Target. Swift had tie-ins with corporations including Keds, Walmart, and Papa John's. A day after the release, she began a cycle of television appearances, starting with a live performance on Good Morning America, which was followed by pre-recorded television appearances on such talk shows as The Ellen DeGeneres Show and 20/20. She gave interviews to as many as 72 radio stations, mostly in the US and some international outlets from South Africa, New Zealand, Spain, Germany, and Mexico. Her live performances at awards shows included the MTV Video Music Awards, the Country Music Association Awards, and the American Music Awards.
Red was further promoted with a string of singles. "I Knew You Were Trouble" was released as an official single to pop radio on November 27, 2012; it was a big hit on pop radio, peaking for seven weeks atop Mainstream Top 40. The single peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, and was a top-ten hit in Oceania and Europe. "22" was released to pop radio in March 2013 and "Red" was released to country radio in June 2013. The singles peaked at number 20 and number six on the Billboard Hot 100, respectively. Tracks "Everything Has Changed" and "The Last Time" were also released as singles, with the latter having a UK-exclusive release. Despite Red's promotion as a country album, its diverse musical styles sparked a media debate over Swift's status as a country artist. Spin argued Red is difficult to categorize because country music is "the most dynamically vibrant pop genre of the last decade or so". Other critics commented Swift had always been more pop-oriented than country and described Red as her inevitable move to mainstream pop. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Swift responded country music "feels like home" and dismissed the debate, saying "I leave the genre labeling to other people".
### Touring
Swift announced the album's accompanying world tour, the Red Tour, shortly after the album's release. On October 26, 2012, she announced the first 58 dates for the North American leg, beginning in Omaha, Nebraska, visiting Canada and the US throughout the spring and summer of 2013, and concluding in Nashville, Tennessee, in September. To support a high demand, Swift held the concerts mostly in sports arenas and stadiums. After the North American leg, the Red Tour visited Australasia, the UK, and Asia.
The Red Tour was a box office success. The four shows at Staples Center in Los Angeles extended Swift's total of sold-out shows to 11, making her the solo artist with the most sold-out shows at Staples Center. She was the first female artist to sell out the Sydney Football Stadium since its opening in 1988. Tickets for the Shanghai show sold out within 60 seconds, setting the Chinese record for the fastest sellout. When it ended in June 2014, the tour had grossed \$150.2 million and became the highest-grossing tour by a country artist of all time.
## Commercial performance
In the US, Red debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 1,208,000 copies, surpassing Garth Brooks's Double Live (1998) as the fastest-selling country album. With Speak Now and Red, Swift was recognized in the Guinness World Records as the "First Solo Female with Two Million-Selling Weeks on the U.S. Albums Chart". Red spent seven non-consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, and made Swift the first female artist, and the second after the Beatles, to have three consecutive studio albums each spend six or more weeks atop the chart. It was the third consecutive time—after Fearless (2008) and Speak Now (2010)—that Swift had a number-one album during the last week before Christmas, traditionally the most competitive week of the year. On Billboard's Top Country Albums chart, it spent 16 weeks at number one, and was the year-end number-one album of both 2012 and 2013. Surpassing 3.11 million copies after two months of sales, Red was the second-highest-selling album of 2012. As of October 2020, its US sales stood at 4.49 million copies. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the album seven-times Platinum for surpassing seven million album-equivalent units.
The album reached number one on the record charts of European and Oceanic countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, and Scotland. It received multi-platinum certifications in Australia (4× Platinum), Canada (4× Platinum), and New Zealand (2× Platinum). In the UK, Red was Swift's first number one on the Albums Chart and had four top-ten songs on the Singles Chart, the most of Swift's albums; it was certified 2× Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and sold 619,000 copies as of June 2021. Less than a month after its release, Red sold 2.8 million copies worldwide. By the end of 2012, Red finished as the global second-best-selling album with 5.2 million copies. By August 2014, it had sold over eight million copies.
## Critical reception
Red generally received positive reviews from contemporary critics, most of whom commended Swift's songwriting. Jon Dolan from Rolling Stone called the album "a 16-song geyser of willful eclecticism", said Swift "often succeeds in joining the Joni [Mitchell]/Carole King tradition of stark-relief emotional mapping", and that "When she's really on, her songs are like tattoos". Pitchfork's Brad Nelson lauded the "newfound patience to Swift's observations" and deeper exploration of emotion in Red's songwriting.
The album's production polarized critics. Billboard praised Red's radio-friendly tunes that catapulted Swift to even greater fame. Stephen Thomas Erlewine from AllMusic asserted that although Swift's lyrics about romantic relationships and social anxiety sound somewhat clumsy, they add substance to "the pristine pop confections", which makes Red a compelling album. The Guardian's Kate Mossman described the album as "one of the finest fantasies pop music has ever constructed". Roberts was impressed by the different musical styles as Swift "strives for something much more grand and accomplished". Caramanica agreed, commenting that the production is a striking feature of Red that proves Swift is more of a pop star than a country singer.
Critics often considered Red to be a sign of Swift growing up. Billboard considered Red to be her first adult pop album, describing her previous works as that of "an accomplished teenager". Caramanica stated that her growth was "largely musical, not experiential." He noted that she was beginning to show more maturity as a strategist and adult. Caramanica asserted that there are indications that Red shows her "body is as alive as her mind," which was "territory she’s generally skipped before now." Dolan considered the album part "Joni Mitchell-influenced maturity binge" and part pop, describing the combination as "not just inevitable but natural." Spin's Michael Robbins characterized the album as a record "full of adult pleasures".
Some reviewers were more reserved in their praise. Jonathan Keefe from Slant Magazine considered Red not consistent enough to be "truly great" but asserted that some of the songs were "career-best work for Swift, who now sounds like the pop star she was destined to be all along". Michael Gallucci from The A.V. Club argued the music was more ambitious than Swift's previous records but considered the album as a whole "complicated and sometimes unfocused". He considered the duets boring and the occasional use of Auto-Tune to "sound like any number of indistinguishable female pop singers". Writing for MSN Music, Robert Christgau viewed Red as an inferior version of the Magnetic Fields' 1999 album 69 Love Songs but appreciated "Begin Again" and "Stay Stay Stay", considering them to "stay happy and hit just as hard" as songs on 69 Love Songs. The Daily Telegraph's James Lachno found the production bloated and commented the album would be better had Swift fully embraced mainstream pop and abandoned her old country sound. Mesfin Fekadu of the Associated Press asserted that the album "sounded empty" compared to Fearless (2008) and Speak Now (2010), but praised "I Almost Do" and the duets.
## Accolades
Red received accolades in terms of both critical and popular recognition. Mainstream publications featuring Red on their lists of the best albums of 2012 included Billboard, The Daily Beast, The Guardian, Idolator, MTV News, Newsday, PopMatters, Rolling Stone, Spin, and Stereogum. Critic Jon Caramanica ranked the album second on his list of 2012's best albums for The New York Times. Red was placed at number 17 on the 2012 Pazz & Jop, an annual mass critics' poll conducted by The Village Voice. Spin proclaimed Red one of 2012's best country albums.
At the 56th Grammy Awards in 2014, Red was nominated for Album of the Year and Best Country Album. The album received nominations at US country music awards, including two nominations for Album of the Year at the 2013 Country Music Association Awards and the 2013 Academy of Country Music Awards. It won Favorite Country Album at the 2013 American Music Awards, Top Album and Top Country Album at the 2013 Billboard Music Awards, Top Selling Album at the 2013 Canadian Country Music Association Awards, and Top Selling International Album of the Year at the 2014 Country Music Awards of Australia.
## Impact and legacy
Red appeared on many publications' lists of the best albums of the 2010s. According to Metacritic, it was the fifteenth-most-acclaimed album of the decade. It featured on Atwood Magazine's unranked list, and was included on lists of The Independent and Pitchfork. It was ranked within the top 10 by Insider (first), Uproxx (third), Billboard (fourth), Rolling Stone (fourth), the Tampa Bay Times (ninth), and Stereogum (tenth). Taste of Country ranked Red as one of the best country albums of the decade. In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Red at number 99 on its revised list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
The album's production straddling country and pop inspired Swift to venture into genres she had not tried before. The successful pop radio singles, specifically the dubstep-infused "I Knew You Were Trouble", served as a "signal flare" for Swift to collaborate with pop producers Max Martin and Shellback, who are known for radio-friendly pop, again. Upon reading reviews calling Red an inconsistent album, Swift fully embraced the electropop sound, transcending her earlier country image. Its upbeat pop production laid the groundwork for the electropop and synth-pop sound of her next album, 1989 (2014). Swift continued to explore pop with its successors Reputation (2017) and Lover (2019).
Many critics claim Red as Swift's best body of work. According to Pitchfork, Red progressed Swift's sound "to meet the highest aspirations of her songwriting", watching her push herself outside of traditional boundaries "to stray into the interzone between pop and country". Clash demarcated Red as the turning point of Swift's career—it "was the first time Taylor actively stepped away from the pretty dresses and southern girl chic" to the outrage of "old fashioned listeners". According to the magazine, Red proved an album can be "both ground-breaking and wildly commercial", because avant-garde is not the only way to experiment with music, as Swift "opened a door for every other musician" in 2012 to coalesce multiple genres. Jordan Sargent of Spin named Red "one of the best pop albums of our time".
Various media outlets have credited Red with inspiring a generation of artists; The New York Times critic Steven Hyden said Red encouraged new indie artists to put out music that is "aesthetically much closer to Swift's pop than anything in the rock underground". MTV said Red normalized intimacy in pop music and popularized Swift's vulnerable songwriting style with future artists such as Halsey, Kacey Musgraves, Troye Sivan, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, and Conan Gray. Fans and critics have also dubbed Red an "autumnal album" due to its aesthetic and lyrical imagery. In 2019, an indie rock album titled ReRed, featuring Wild Pink, Adult Mom, Chris Farren, and other artists, was released as a tribute to Red. All of its proceeds go to Equal Justice Initiative.
### 2021 re-recording
In November 2020, following a dispute over the ownership of the masters to her back catalog, Swift began to re-record her first six studio albums. The first one was Fearless (Taylor's Version), released on April 9, 2021. On June 18, 2021, Swift announced Red (Taylor's Version) would be released on November 12, 2021, a week earlier than originally planned. The album contains all 30 songs Swift recorded for the 2012 release of Red; these include the charity single "Ronan", her recordings of the 2016 Little Big Town single "Better Man" and 2018 Sugarland single "Babe", the ten-minute version of "All Too Well", and six other previously unreleased tracks.
## Track listing
## Personnel
Credits are adapted from AllMusic.
Musicians
- Taylor Swift – lead vocals, background vocals, acoustic guitar
- Nathan Chapman – bass guitar, drums, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, keyboards, mandolin, percussion, piano, soloist, synthesizer, background vocals
- Peggy Baldwin – cello
- Brett Banducci – viola
- Jeff Bhasker – bass guitar, keyboards, piano, background vocals
- J. Bonilla – drums, percussion
- Nick Buda – drums
- Tom Bukovac – electric guitar
- David Campbell – string arrangements, conducting
- Daphne Chen – violin
- Lauren Chipman – viola
- Eric Darken – percussion
- Marcia Dickstein – harp
- Richard Dodd – cello
- Paul Franklin – steel guitar
- Eric Gorfain – violin
- Dann Huff – bouzouki, electric guitar, high strung guitar, mandolin
- Charlie Judge – accordion, Hammond B3, piano, upright piano, strings, synthaxe, synthesizer
- Gina Kronstadt – violin
- John Krovoza – cello
- Marisa Kuney – violin
- Jacknife Lee – bass guitar, guitar, keyboards
- Max Martin – keyboards
- Grant Mickelson – guitar
- Anders Mouridsen – guitar
- Jamie Muhoberac – cello
- Neli Nikolaeva – violin
- Owen Pallett – conductor, orchestration
- Radu Pieptea – violin
- Simeon Pillich – contrabass
- Wes Precourt – violin
- Bill Rieflin – drums
- Shellback – bass guitar, guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, keyboards
- Jake Sinclair – bass guitar, background vocals
- Jimmie Lee Sloas – bass guitar
- Aaron Sterling – drums
- Jeff Takiguchi – contrabass
- Andy Thompson – guitar, electric piano
- Ilya Toshinsky – mandolin
- Butch Walker – drums, guitar, keyboards, percussion, background vocals
- Patrick Warren – string arrangements
- Amy Wickman – violin
- Dan Wilson – bass guitar, electric guitar, piano, background vocals
- Rodney Wirtz – violin
- Jonathan Yudkin – fiddle, violin
- Caitlin Evanson – background vocals
- Elizabeth Huett – background vocals ("The Moment I Knew")
- Tyler Sam Johnson – background vocals
- Gary Lightbody – featured artist, background vocals
- Ciara O'Leary – background vocals
- Ed Sheeran – featured artist
Production
- Taylor Swift – songwriting, production
- Nathan Chapman – production, engineering
- Joe Baldridge – engineering
- Sam Bell – engineering
- Matt Bishop – engineering
- Delbert Bowers – assistant
- Chad Carlson – engineering
- Tom Coyne – mastering
- Leland Elliott – assistant
- Jeff Bhasker – production
- Eric Eylands – assistant
- Greg Fuess – assistant
- Chris Galland – assistant
- Şerban Ghenea – mixing
- Matty Green – assistant
- John Hanes – mixing engineering
- Sam Holland – engineering
- Dann Huff – production
- David Huff – digital editing
- Michael Ilbert – engineer
- Tyler Sam Johnson – guitar engineer
- Jacknife Lee – engineering, production, songwriting, programming
- Gary Lightbody – songwriting
- Steve Marcantonio – engineer
- Manny Marroquin – mixing
- Max Martin – production, songwriting
- Seth Morton – assistant
- Justin Niebank – mixing
- Chris Owens – assistant
- John Rausch – engineering
- Matt Rausch – engineering
- Tim Roberts – assistant
- Eric Robinson – engineeringg
- Liz Rose – songwriting
- Pawel Sek – engineering
- Shellback – production, songwriting, programming
- Ed Sheeran – songwriting
- Jake Sinclair – engineering
- Mark "Spike" Stent – mixing
- Andy Thompson – engineering
- Butch Walker – production
- Hank Williams – mastering
- Brian David Willis – engineer
- Dan Wilson – production, songwriting
Visuals and design
- Taylor Swift – creative director
- Sarah Barlow – photography
- Austin Hale – designing
- Jemma Muradian – hair stylist
- Bethany Newman – art direction
- Josh Newman – art direction
- Lorrie Turk – make-up artist
Managerial'''
- Scott Borchetta – executive producer
- Leann Bennett – production coordination
- Jason Campbell – production coordination
- Mike "Frog" Griffith – production coordination
- JoAnn Tominaga – production coordination
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
### Decade-end charts
### All-time charts
## Certifications and sales
## Release history
## See also
- List of Billboard 200 number-one albums of 2012
- List of Billboard 200 number-one albums of 2013
- List of Billboard Top Country Albums number ones of 2012
- List of Billboard'' Top Country Albums number ones of 2013
- List of number-one albums of 2012 (Australia)
- List of number-one albums of 2012 (Canada)
- List of number-one albums from the 2010s (New Zealand)
- List of UK Albums Chart number ones of the 2010s
- Cultural impact of Taylor Swift
|
14,816,487 |
Aliso Creek (Orange County)
| 1,170,832,400 |
River in the United States of America
|
[
"Aliso Viejo, California",
"Laguna Beach, California",
"Mission Viejo, California",
"Rivers of Orange County, California",
"Rivers of Southern California",
"San Joaquin Hills",
"Santa Ana Mountains"
] |
Aliso Creek is a 19.8-mile (31.9 km)-long, mostly urban stream in south Orange County, California. Originating in the Cleveland National Forest in the Santa Ana Mountains, it flows generally southwest and empties into the Pacific Ocean at Laguna Beach. The creek's watershed drains 34.9 square miles (90 km<sup>2</sup>), and it is joined by seven main tributaries. As of 2018, the watershed had a population of 144,000 divided among seven incorporated cities.
Aliso Creek flows over highly erosive marine sedimentary rock of late Eocene to Pliocene age. What would become the Aliso Creek watershed originally lay at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, before being uplifted as recently as 10 million years ago. About 1.2 million years ago, the San Joaquin Hills began to uplift in the path of Aliso Creek. Occasionally swollen by wetter climates during glacial periods, the creek carved the deep water gap known today as Aliso Canyon, the main feature of Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Park.
Historically, Aliso Creek served as the boundary between the Acjachemem (Juaneño) and Tongva (Gabrieleño) Native Americans. Spanish explorers and missionaries reached the area in the 1700s and established Mission San Juan Capistrano, whose lands included part of the Aliso Creek watershed. In the 1840s the watershed was divided between several Mexican land grants. After California became part of the United States, the ranchos were gradually partitioned and sold off to farmers and settlers; starting in the 1950s, real estate companies acquired most of the land for development.
By the 21st century, more than 70 percent of the Aliso Creek watershed was urbanized. Most of the creek's course has been channelized or otherwise impacted by development. Pollution and erosion from urban runoff have become chronic issues. However, parts of the creek remain free flowing and provide important regional wildlife habitat, especially in the Aliso Canyon section. The creek has recently been the focus of projects to restore the stream channel and improve water quality.
## Etymology
The first recorded use of the name "Aliso" was for the Rancho Cañada de los Alisos Mexican land grant in 1841. The rancho area was renamed El Toro sometime before 1900, but the name "Aliso Creek" persisted. The word aliso means "alder" in Spanish, and refers to the riparian forests that historically occurred along the creek. The California sycamore, Platanus racemosa, is also known as aliso in Spanish, and is common in the area around the creek.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey's Geographic Names Information System, the creek has also been historically called "Los Alisos Creek" and "Alisos Creek". Several nearby geographical features also share the name, including the city of Aliso Viejo, Aliso Beach, Aliso Peak (a headland near the creek's mouth), Los Alisos Intermediate School in Mission Viejo, and Aliso Creek Road.
## Course
Aliso Creek rises along the Loma Ridge in the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains, near the community of Portola Hills, Lake Forest. The creek's headwaters are at an elevation of 1,700 feet (520 m) in the Cleveland National Forest near Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park. The creek flows south along Country Home Road then begins to parallel Santiago Canyon Road, which becomes El Toro Road south of Cook's Corner. The creek enters Mission Viejo, flowing freely in a natural streambed along the bottom of a brushy, shaded ravine. It turns southwest, crossing under the 241 toll road and passing Saddleback Church, then receives an unnamed tributary from the right. The creek then enters Lake Forest, where it receives Munger Creek from the right and English Canyon Creek from the left.
Below English Canyon, Aliso Creek flows in a concrete channel through Heroes Park and then reverts to a natural channel once again in El Toro Park. Past Muirlands Boulevard the creek flows in a concrete channel, making a sharp turn to the southeast before veering back south towards Interstate 5. Downstream of the freeway Aliso Creek flows through Laguna Hills then through Aliso Park in the retirement community of Laguna Woods Village. It enters Aliso Viejo at the Moulton Parkway bridge near Sheep Hills Park. Below this point the valley widens at the northernmost tip of Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Park, the beginning of a greenbelt that stretches from here nearly to the Pacific Ocean.
Soon after entering the park, Aliso Creek is joined by the Dairy Fork from the right then the Aliso Hills Channel from the left, before passing under the 73 toll road. Below this point, the creek flows past Journey School, Aliso Niguel High School and Wood Canyon Elementary School as well as the Laguna Niguel Skate and Soccer Park, where it skirts the northwestern part of Laguna Niguel. Below Aliso Creek Road it is joined from the east by its largest tributary, Sulphur Creek. Sulphur Creek drains much of northern Laguna Niguel and is dammed to form Laguna Niguel Lake, the main feature of Laguna Niguel Regional Park.
From there, Aliso Creek turns west and enters Aliso Canyon, a nearly 1,000-foot (300 m) deep gorge which cuts through the San Joaquin Hills approaching the Pacific. About a mile (1.6 km) below Sulphur Creek, Aliso Creek is impounded at a small concrete dam. It then receives its second largest tributary, Wood Canyon Creek, to the south of Soka University of America. Below Wood Canyon it turns south, winding through the wilderness park then turning west at the South Orange County Wastewater Agency (SOCWA)'s Coastal Treatment Plant. It then flows through the former Aliso Creek Inn and Golf Course (now The Ranch at Laguna Beach), under Pacific Coast Highway, and empties into the sea at Aliso Beach in Laguna Beach.
Aliso Creek forms a narrow tidal lagoon just above its mouth at Aliso Beach. The lagoon originally covered a large area at the outlet of Aliso Canyon, dammed by a sandbar that only breached during the rainy season. Due to development of the golf course and parking lots at the mouth of the creek, the lagoon has been significantly reduced from its original size. The increased freshwater inflow caused by urban runoff has further disrupted the hydrologic regime of the lagoon, which occasionally breaches causing large surge flows into the Pacific Ocean before the sandbar re-forms.
## Hydrology
Aliso Creek was historically a seasonal stream with a few sections containing water year round, including the headwaters and lower Aliso Canyon. Significant flow only occurred in the rainy months of November through March. As recently as 1982, the creek was observed to be dry in the summer. As of 2012, urban runoff contributed a dry season flow of 5 million gallons (20,000 m<sup>3</sup>) per day, or approximately 8 cubic feet per second (0.23 m<sup>3</sup>/s), at the creek's mouth. Urban runoff accounts for at least 80 percent of the creek's dry season flow.
The United States Geological Survey operated a stream gage on the creek at the El Toro Road bridge in Mission Viejo from 1930 to 1980. This gage measured runoff from 7.91 square miles (20.49 km<sup>2</sup>), or 26 percent of the watershed area. There was also a gauge in Laguna Beach which measured runoff from the entire watershed, but it operated only from 1982 to 1987.
The average annual flow at El Toro was 0.92 cubic feet per second (0.026 m<sup>3</sup>/s), ranging from 4.7 cubic feet per second (0.13 m<sup>3</sup>/s) in February to 0.05 cubic feet per second (0.0014 m<sup>3</sup>/s) in July. The highest peak flow was 2,500 cubic feet per second (71 m<sup>3</sup>/s) on February 24, 1969. At the Laguna Beach gage, the average annual flow was 19.2 cubic feet per second (0.54 m<sup>3</sup>/s), with a high of 50 cubic feet per second (1.4 m<sup>3</sup>/s) in March and a low of 4.5 cubic feet per second (0.13 m<sup>3</sup>/s) in June. The largest flow recorded at the Laguna Beach gauge was 5,400 cubic feet per second (150 m<sup>3</sup>/s) during the El Niño event on March 1, 1983.
Urbanization is the main cause of increased winter flooding, due to the covering of land with impervious surfaces. From 1931 to 1960, the average annual peak flow at the El Toro gauge was 511 cubic feet per second (14.5 m<sup>3</sup>/s), and between 1960 and 1980, the average peak flow was 1,178 cubic feet per second (33.4 m<sup>3</sup>/s).
## Watershed
The Aliso Creek drainage basin lies in the south central part of Orange County, roughly halfway between the Santa Ana River and the border of San Diego County. It is an elongated area of 34.9 square miles (90 km<sup>2</sup>), ranging from about a mile (1.6 km) in width in the north to 5 miles (8.0 km) wide in the south. The watershed is characterized by rolling hills, with very little flat land except in the alluvial valleys along Aliso Creek. The portion of the Santa Ana Mountains in the Aliso Creek watershed top out at approximately 2,300 feet (700 m), while the San Joaquin Hills rise to 1,020 feet (310 m) at Temple Hill, locally called "Top of the World", in Laguna Beach west of Aliso Canyon. Aside from 44-acre (18 ha) Laguna Niguel Lake, an impoundment of the Sulphur Creek tributary, there are no major bodies of fresh water.
The watershed experiences a dry Mediterranean climate. As of 2001, the average annual precipitation in the San Juan Hydrological Unit, which Aliso Creek is part of, was 16.42 inches (417 mm). The watershed borders five major Orange County watersheds: Santiago Creek to the north, San Diego Creek to the west, Laguna Canyon to the southwest, Salt Creek to the southeast, and San Juan Creek to the east.
As of 2018, the Aliso Creek watershed had a population of 144,000 divided among seven incorporated cities, or a population density of 4,100 persons per square mile (1,600 persons per km<sup>2</sup>). Nine communities were established in the creek's watershed as it was developed in the 20th century. By 2001 seven of them had become cities (from mouth to source, Laguna Beach, Laguna Niguel, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Hills, Laguna Woods, Lake Forest (formerly El Toro), and Mission Viejo), and the last two, Foothill Ranch and Portola Hills, were incorporated into the city of Lake Forest in 2000.
The largest land use in the watershed is residential, which as of 2009 accounted for 39.6 percent of the total area. Other urban land uses are commercial (10.7 percent), miscellaneous (4.9 percent), agriculture (3.7 percent) and industrial (1.6 percent). Public lands, including national forest and county parks, comprised 26.4 percent of the watershed, and another 13.1 percent was unincorporated. Much of the terrain in the watershed has been regraded to build homes and roads, and a number of smaller tributaries such as Munger Creek have been completely filled in.
### Crossings
Crossings of the creek are listed from mouth to source (year built in parentheses). The creek is crossed by roughly 30 major bridges.
- SR 1 / Pacific Coast Highway (1926)
- Six footbridges in the Aliso Creek Golf Course
- SOCWA Coastal Treatment Plant access road
- Service Road for ACWHEP Dam
- AWMA (Aliso Water Management Agency) Road
- Aliso Creek Road (1988)
- Pacific Park Drive
- SR 73 / California State Route 73– twin bridges (1996)
- Aliso Creek Trail
- Moulton Parkway (northbound 1969, southbound 1987)
- Laguna Hills Drive—twin bridges (1985)
- Avenida Sevilla
- Two footbridges in Aliso Park
- Paseo de Valencia (1966)
- Aliso Creek Trail
- I-5 / Interstate 5 (1959)
- Aliso Creek Trail
- Los Alisos Boulevard (1973)
- Muirlands Boulevard (1973)
- Private road in Lake Forest Golf Center
- Surf Line
- Jeronimo Road (1974)
- Aliso Creek Trail/2nd Street pedestrian bridge
- Aliso Creek Trail
- Trabuco Road—twin bridges (1975)
- Creekside Drive (1980)
- El Toro Road (1975)
- Normandale Drive (1987)
- Portola Parkway
- Saddleback Parkway
- SR 241 / California State Route 241– twin bridges (1995)
- Aliso Creek Trail
- Aliso Creek Trail
- Glenn Ranch Road
- Aliso Creek Trail
- El Toro Road
- El Toro Road
- Santiago Canyon Road
- Crystal Canyon Road
- Country Home Road
### Tributaries
From mouth to source, Aliso Creek is joined by seven major tributaries. Another forty-six minor streams and drains flow into the creek.
## Geology
Most of Southern California, including all of Orange County, was part of the Pacific Ocean until about 10 million years ago (MYA) when regional uplift began. The Santa Ana Mountains, where the creek originates, began to rise about 5.5 million years ago along the Elsinore Fault. Most of the Aliso Creek watershed sits on several layers of marine sedimentary strata, the oldest dating from the Eocene (55.8–33.9 MYA) and the most recent, the Pliocene (5.33–2.59 MYA). These alluvial sediments range from 13 to 36 feet (4.0 to 11.0 m) in depth. The watershed includes outcrops of the Topanga Formation, Monterey Formation, San Onofre Breccia, Capistrano Formation and Niguel Formation. Generally throughout the watershed, there are five major soil and rock outcrop types—Capistrano sandy loam, Cieneba sandy loam, Marina loamy sand, Myford sandy loam, and Cieneba-rock outcrop. The water table ranges from 6 to 20 feet (1.8 to 6.1 m) deep.
About 1.22 million years ago, the San Joaquin Hills along the Orange County coast began their uplift along the San Joaquin Hills blind thrust fault which extends south from the Los Angeles Basin. The hills rose directly in the path of Aliso Creek, which cut a water gap through the range, forming Aliso Canyon. The uplift also diverted Sulphur Creek, which originally flowed south into Salt Creek, to turn north and join Aliso Creek.
During the last glacial period (110,000 to 10,000 years ago), especially in the Wisconsinian glaciation (31,000 to 10,000 years ago), the climate of Southern California became periodically much wetter, with a climate similar to the present-day Pacific Northwest. At these times Aliso Creek was a river carrying much more water than it does today. During glacial periods sea level was as much as 400 feet (120 m) lower, increasing the stream gradient and thus its erosive force. These factors led to Aliso Creek carving out a much larger series of valleys than would appear possible with its present-day volume. As sea levels rose after the Wisconsinian glaciation, Aliso Canyon became a long narrow bay. Over thousands of years Aliso Creek filled in the bay with sediment, creating the flat alluvial valley floor seen today, while the creek itself remains as an underfit stream.
## Ecology
### Plants
Before urbanization of the watershed, Aliso Creek and some of its tributaries supported a significant riparian zone dominated by native hardwoods such as coast live oak, sycamore, alder, cottonwood and arroyo willow. Many of the trees in Aliso Creek's riparian zone, especially near the mouth of the creek, were cut down in the Spanish Mission period to construct colonial settlements. During the early 20th century, groundwater withdrawal for agriculture killed off many of the remaining trees along the creek. The most significant remaining riparian habitat today occurs in Aliso and Wood Canyons, and along the uppermost headwaters of Aliso Creek.
Increased erosion and pollution caused by urban runoff have had adverse impacts on the riparian zone. Invasive plants, including tobacco tree, castor bean, pampas grass, periwinkle, and artichoke thistle, but most notably the giant reed, have in many places replaced native trees. Giant reed was originally planted in the 1970s to control erosion. These invasive species are most prevalent along upper Sulphur Creek, the lower half of Aliso Creek, and Wood Canyon Creek.
The hilly terrain of the watershed supports mostly grassland and coastal scrub vegetation. Native shrub species present in the watershed include California brittlebush, California buckwheat, California sagebrush, California goldenbush, coyote brush and mule fat. Like the riparian zones, native grassland and shrublands have been heavily impacted by invasive species. A 2009 survey conducted in the Aliso Creek watershed found non-native grass coverage of between 66 and 100 percent, and non-native shrub coverage of between 0 and 50 percent, across fourteen sample sites.
### Animals
Mountain lions, bobcats, mule deer, gray fox and other large mammals once ranged throughout the Aliso Creek watershed; today, they are mostly confined to the wilderness reserves in the Santa Ana Mountains (Cleveland National Forest) and San Joaquin Hills (Aliso/Wood Canyons, Laguna Coast Wilderness). Most large mammal populations in the Aliso/Wood Canyons area are considered at risk of extirpation by the 2040s, in the absence of extensive habitat restoration. Mountain lions have already disappeared from Aliso/Wood Canyons. Although most of the creek channel is tightly bound by urban development, it is considered a potential wildlife corridor between these two areas. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers describes the corridor as "meager at best with several places where Aliso Creek is very narrow, concrete, or incorporates golf courses parks and school grounds."
The watershed supports multiple native bird species, including California least tern, least Bell's vireo, southwestern willow flycatcher, California gnatcatcher, and western snowy plover. The loss of riparian zones has reduced bird habitat in the watershed. These species are mostly found in undeveloped areas of Aliso and Wood Canyons, the upper reaches of Aliso Creek, and some parts of English Canyon Creek. Aliso Canyon is one of the most diverse bird habitats in Orange County, with some 122 nesting and migratory species found there. The canyon also has raptors including northern harrier, Cooper's hawk, golden eagle and peregrine falcon.
The creek has several species of amphibians and reptiles. Species of concern listed by the state of California include the Coastal Range newt, orange-throated whiptail, coastal western whiptail, coast horned lizard, California legless lizard, and two-striped garter snake. Native frogs and the arroyo toad once inhabited the creek, but they were extirpated by damage to the channel following floods in 1983. Non-native bullfrogs have been introduced to parts of the creek. The threatened southwestern pond turtle, the only indigenous turtle species to Orange County, is also found in the creek.
### Fish and amphibians
Although many fish species were once found in Aliso Creek, the only remaining one is the introduced common carp, which can tolerate the low oxygen levels and high temperatures typical of the creek water. Aside from carp, several other native and introduced fish species were found in the creek until the 1980s, including mosquito fish, bluegill, bass, and channel catfish. After flooding exacerbated by urban runoff destroyed much of the remaining riparian habitat, these species were reported to have disappeared from the area.
The historical presence of endangered steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in Aliso Creek has been debated. Until 2006 the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) stated that there was "no evidence of historical or extant of O. mykiss in anadromous waters" in Aliso Creek. However, a 1998 study co-authored by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and US Fish & Wildlife Service declared that steelhead had inhabited the creek until the 1970s, when increased urbanization resulted in poor water quality conditions (pollution and low oxygen levels) that drove the migrational fish out.
In 2009, after years of petitioning from local residents and environmental groups including Friends of the Aliso Creek Steelhead and Clean Water Now, the NMFS recognized the lower 7 miles (11 km) of Aliso Creek as former steelhead habitat and the creek was added to the Distinct Population Segment List under the jurisdictional domain of NOAA. It is now considered a candidate for re-colonization. The evidence cited included Native American (Acjachemen) accounts of takings, as well as anglers who reported taking steelhead trout in the 1960s and 1970s from Aliso Creek's estuary and Aliso Canyon before suburban development began. The last reported observation of steelhead in Aliso Creek was in 1972.
In the 1970s, a large population of the threatened tidewater goby (10,000–15,000) was documented in the Aliso Creek estuary. The species has declined significantly since then due to pollution and reduction of its habitat. In 2011 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated the Aliso Creek estuary and several other coastal Southern California streams as critical habitat for the tidewater goby.
## History
### First inhabitants
Aliso Creek historically served as a boundary between the Tongva Native Americans in the north, and the Acjachemen (sometimes grouped with the larger Payómkawichum) in the south. The Tongva's territory extended north, past the Santa Ana River and San Gabriel River, into present-day Los Angeles County, while the Acjachemen's smaller territory extended from Aliso Creek south, past San Juan Creek, and to the vicinity of San Mateo Creek in present-day San Diego County. The availability of perennial water in some parts of the creek made it an attractive location for Native Americans to camp, hunt, gather and fish. The numerous oak groves along the creek provided an abundant supply of acorns, a staple of their diet. About 70 archaeological sites have been discovered along the creek, with 33 on the northwest side and 47 on the southeast side. An Acjachemen village situated near the confluence of Aliso Creek and Sulphur Creek was named Niguili, possibly meaning "a large spring" in the Luiseño language.
The placement of the tribal boundary at Aliso Creek has been disputed, as the usual practice among indigenous peoples of this region was to claim watershed divides rather than stream channels as boundaries. Constance Cameron challenged this view in the paper Aliso Creek: The Great Divide? (1974) presented to the Southern California Academy of Sciences, arguing that the boundary lay north of Aliso Creek and that the entire stream lay within Acjachemen land. D. Earle (1992) further stated that "There is some evidence... that Gabrielino (Tongva) territory may have extended only as far south as the Tustin Plain" (a location about 10 miles (16 km) north of Aliso Creek). This contradicts the generally accepted theory originated by Alfred L. Kroeber (1925) who stated that "Juaneño (Acjachemen) place names do not extend north of Aliso Creek". The Master Key (1956) by Bernice Eastman Johnson and The First Angelinos (1996) by W. McCawley also place the boundary at Aliso Creek.
### Spanish exploration and colonization
On July 24, 1769, the Spanish Portolà expedition led by Gaspar de Portolá, traveling north from San Diego, reached a stream which Fray Joan Crespí described as "Alisos Creek", which was actually the Arroyo Trabuco. They camped there for two days before continuing on and crossing what is now known as Aliso Creek, where they found wild grapes and roses in abundance, on July 26. Crespí wrote in his diary, "So we went on over very open country, with hills and broad mesas, ascending and descending through three or four little valleys of good soil well grown with alders." He also wrote of the local Acjachemen people: "They came without arms and with a friendliness unequaled; they made us presents of their poor seeds and we made return with ribbons and gew-gaws."
These first explorers were soon followed by Franciscan missionaries who established Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776 near the main population center of the Acjachemen people, on San Juan Creek about 5 miles (8.0 km) east of the mouth of Aliso Creek. The Spanish referred to the Acjachemen as the Juaneño, and to the Tongva as the Gabrielino, after the further away Mission San Gabriel Arcángel. The Aliso Creek watershed was part of the vast land holdings of Mission San Juan Capistrano. The El Camino Real ("King's Highway"), connecting the coastal missions in California, crossed Aliso Creek in the vicinity of El Toro (today's Lake Forest). The Spanish established Rancheria Niguel in what is now the city of Aliso Viejo and grazed their cattle there. Most of the Native Americans were relocated to the mission where they were forced into agricultural labor and converted to Spanish Catholicism.
In order to provide timber for Spanish settlements, most of the riparian forests around Aliso Creek were heavily logged. It was said that the trees near the mouth of Aliso Canyon were especially tall and there were accounts of Spanish ships mooring in the large bay at the outlet of Aliso Canyon and men going ashore to chop down and take away these trees for constructing mission buildings, ships and other structures.
### Mexican land grants
Mexico won independence from Spain in 1822, keeping the Alta California province, and secularized the missions in the 1830s. Former mission lands were divided into private land grants. In 1842, Don Juan Avila received the 13,316-acre (53.89 km<sup>2</sup>) Rancho Niguel grant. The name of the rancho was derived from the original Rancheria Niguel, which in turn received its name from the Acjachemen village that once stood nearby. Rancho Niguel included the portion of the Aliso Creek watershed stretching from what is now I-5 nearly to the Pacific, as well as significant areas of land on either side. Don Juan became known as "El Rico" for his wealth and hospitality; he made a fortune driving beef cattle up to Northern California after the gold rush started in 1848. "The hospitality of the Avila’s were legendary. In 1846 and 1847 Generals Frémont and Kearny as well as Commodore Stockton were said to have been entertained. General Andreas Pico and the last two Mexican governors Pío Pico and José María Flores were also welcome visitors... There was always music and plenty of food. Whenever provisions ran low, locals knew that they could always count of the generosity of Don Juan."
Rancho Cañada de los Alisos (translated as "Valley of the Alders" or "Valley of the Sycamores"), encompassing the northern half of the Aliso Creek watershed including what would become El Toro, was granted to Don José Antonio Fernando Serrano (Don Juan's brother-in-law) in 1842–1846. The nearly 11,000-acre (4,500 ha) rancho would come to feature large tracts of grazing land as well as vineyards, orchards and vegetable gardens near Aliso Creek. El Camino Real provided the boundary between the two ranchos; Don José and Don Juan built adobes along Aliso Creek on either side of the road (though Don Juan's main residence was in San Juan Capistrano). Don José also had a racetrack and rodeo grounds near Aliso Creek, near the present day intersection of El Toro Road and Muirlands Blvd.
The foundation of the Avila adobe still exists today, south of I-5 with a sign marking its location. There is no trace today of the original Serrano residence, although its precise location has been identified in Sycamore Park in Mission Viejo, on the east bank of Aliso Creek north of I-5. In 1996 descendants of the Serrano and Avila families and others dedicated a plaque at the site.
### Statehood
Following the Mexican–American War, California was annexed by the United States, becoming the 31st state in 1850. In 1871, the first American settler along Aliso Creek, Eugene Salter, claimed 152 acres (0.62 km<sup>2</sup>) near the mouth of the creek inside Aliso Canyon, but abandoned it soon after. The following year the land was acquired by homesteaders George and Sarah Thurston and their eight children, who converted the land surrounding the creek into orchards and vegetable gardens, and later helped establish a public campground at Aliso Beach. In 1914 most of the Thurston family left for Santa Ana, though their son Joe stayed until selling the land in 1921. It served as a Girl Scout camp for several years before the Laguna Beach Country Club, the precursor of the present day hotel and golf course, was built in 1950.
After the severe drought of 1863–64, in which thousands of cattle died, Don José Serrano was forced to sell the Rancho Cañada de los Alisos to J.S. Slauson, a Los Angeles banker. The ranch passed through several owners before being acquired by Dwight Whiting in 1884. Whiting heavily promoted the settlement of the area, calling it "Aliso City". The name "El Toro" (of unclear origin, though it had been in use since 1838) was used after the U.S. Postal Service declined the name "Aliso" for a post office, citing that it was too similar to Alviso. He granted a right of way to the California Southern Railroad Company and even traveled to England to "encourage 'gentleman farmers' to come to El Toro to raise oranges and walnuts." The Surf Line was extended through the area in 1888, connecting Los Angeles to San Diego via Orange County. By 1932, citrus and other fruit trees were the main crops in El Toro, irrigated by wells sunk into the shallow groundwater basins along Aliso creek.
For similar reasons, Don Juan Avila sold the Rancho Niguel in 1865 to John Forster, and the property was eventually purchased by Lewis Moulton and Jean Pierre Daguerre in 1895. Daguerre was one of many Basque immigrants who arrived in this part of Orange County starting in the 1870s, introducing sheep ranching and crops of bean and barley to the area. Moulton and Daguerre purchased parts of adjoining ranches, bringing the total size of the property to 26,000 acres (11,000 ha). The ranch remained under their ownership for approximately thirty-eight years, and the Moulton family continued to own it until the 1960s. Cattle and sheep ranching and dryland farming continued on Rancho Niguel until the mid-20th century.
### Urbanization and development
In 1927 Laguna Beach became the first city to be incorporated in the Aliso Creek watershed and the second in Orange County. Wells were drilled into the stream bed near its mouth and water was piped to homes in Laguna Beach. However, in 1928 the Aliso Creek supply was discontinued due to "the undesirable quality of the water" caused by high chloride levels. The idea of using uncontaminated surface water from Aliso Creek was also considered, but this would require the construction of a large storage reservoir. In 1934, an A. J. Stead proposed to build a dam just above the mouth of the creek to store 2,650 acre-feet (3,270,000 m<sup>3</sup>) and provide a firm annual yield of 150 acre-feet (190,000 m<sup>3</sup>) of water. Lewis Moulton filed a lawsuit as the reservoir would flood part of the Rancho Niguel, but the dam project was upheld in a hearing in 1936. However, this dam was never built.
With the exception of the farming community of El Toro, the rest of the watershed remained largely unpopulated into the 1950s. In the 1950s, Rancho Niguel was sold off to real estate developers to build the planned cities of Laguna Niguel, Aliso Viejo, and Laguna Hills, with an undeveloped portion to the south that would later become Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Park. Up until the 1960s and 1970s, barely 15 percent of the watershed was urbanized, but by 1990, after doubling the rate of development in the past two decades, the watershed was roughly 60 percent urbanized. The cities of Mission Viejo and Laguna Niguel were incorporated in 1988 and 1989, respectively. In 1991 El Toro incorporated as the city of Lake Forest; Laguna Hills also incorporated in 1991, and Laguna Woods in 1999. By the early 21st century, more than 70 percent of the watershed was urbanized. The newest city in the watershed, Aliso Viejo, was incorporated in 2001.
## Flood control
In the early 1900s, several significant floods wreaked havoc in southern California. The Orange County Flood Control District was created by Orange County Flood Control Act of 1927 in response to some of these flooding events. Over the following decades most streams in Orange County were channelized, with Aliso Creek being channelized to facilitate urban development starting in the 1960s. Although some parts of Aliso Creek were completely lined with concrete, it retains an earthen riverbed in most parts despite being confined to a narrow channel. A major weakness in the flood control system is at the south end of Aliso Canyon where the creek is confined by steep cliffs and the Aliso Creek golf course. This area has suffered severe flood damage several times in the 20th century. The 1998 flood was the largest on record. It inundated the Aliso Creek Inn and Golf Course, destroyed six footbridges across Aliso Creek and caused severe bank erosion in many places along the creek.
Like most other coastal Orange County streams, the watershed of Aliso Creek is now heavily urbanized. With 70 percent of the original land surface now underneath impermeable surfaces such as pavement and buildings, far more runoff now enters the creek during storm events, greatly increasing the risk of flooding. Several tributaries of Aliso Creek—the Dairy Fork, Aliso Hills Channel, Munger Creek, and other smaller ones—have been replaced by storm drains. Parts of Sulphur Creek and English Canyon Creek have been channelized as well. The only tributary that closely resembles its natural condition is Wood Canyon Creek, although it is still affected considerably by urban runoff.
There are several facilities capable of storing floodwaters, the largest of which is Laguna Niguel Lake formed by the Sulphur Creek Dam on Sulphur Creek. The Sulphur Creek Dam, completed in 1966, was built as an irrigation reservoir, but was acquired by the Orange County Flood Control District in 1970. In addition, there are two detention basins on the main stem of Aliso Creek. The first is El Toro Detention Basin, an off-stream basin in a portion of Heroes Park in Lake Forest, and the second is the on-stream Pacific Park Detention Basin in Aliso Viejo. There are also detention basins constructed on upper Wood Canyon Creek, Dairy Fork, and English Canyon Creek.
Nineteen drop structures have been constructed on Aliso Creek to mitigate the damaging erosion caused by increased flooding. Many of these structures were constructed in response to a 1969 flood that caused \$1 million of damage along Aliso Creek, while others were necessary to mitigate erosion caused by artificial straightening of the stream channel. In one of the largest such projects, at Aliso Creek Road, the creek was realigned in an excavated channel through a ridge in order to accommodate the construction of the Chet Holifield Federal Building and Alicia Parkway. Because this shortened the stream channel by about 1,500 feet (460 m) and increased its gradient, two 10-foot (3.0 m) drop structures were constructed to prevent the creek from eroding upstream.
## Environmental issues
Aliso Creek is listed as a Clean Water Act impaired water, which is defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as "impaired by one or more pollutants that do not meet one or more water quality standards". The creek frequently exceeds bacterial limits set by California law. At Aliso Beach, the creek water is considered unsafe for swimming 99 percent of the time. Contact with seawater at the beach is discouraged for 72 hours (3 days) after a major storm event. The creek contains elevated levels of E. coli, phosphorus, nitrogen and selenium, which comes mainly from heavy application of fertilizer and manure, and other organic pollutants in urban runoff. High water temperatures, sometimes exceeding 90 °F (32 °C) in the summer, promote the growth of bacteria as well as algae blooms leading to eutrophication. Runoff of chlorine, oils and heavy metals, mainly caused by irrigation and car washing, have killed off most fish and shrimp species in the creek, with the exception of carp.
The Los Angeles Times reported in 1997 that "County health officials acknowledge that the bacterial count at the mouth of the creek—which curls into a warm-water stagnant pond that flushes out onto the beach—is at times alarmingly high, often surpassing the legal limit for California. As a result, the area where the creek meets the sea, and the creek itself, are considered permanently off limits to swimmers and bear prominent signs that warn of the dangers of trespassing into such toxic waters. Nevertheless, people do, almost daily. Officials from the Orange County Environmental Health Department say that skin rashes, infections, "pink eye" and other assorted ailments are not uncommon to those who use Aliso Beach and, unwittingly, come in contact with the creek and its invisible bacteria...".
Urbanization has also changed sediment transport in the creek. The obstruction of natural sediment sources and increased water flow due to urban runoff has caused significant downcutting in the river bed. The creek has eroded to depths exceeding 20 feet (6.1 m) below its original bed in some areas, disconnecting the creek from its natural floodplain and riparian zones. In 2017 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported that \$5 million of damage had been caused by erosion along lower Aliso Creek. This includes physical damage to creek banks, bridges, roads and water pipelines. Landslides have occurred along the creek and its tributaries, including at English Canyon in the 1990s. The creek is estimated to deliver 20,000–60,000 tons of sediment to the sea in an average year, and as much as 200,000 tons in wet years.
The South Orange County Wastewater Authority (SOCWA) Coastal Treatment Plant is located next to Aliso Creek in Laguna Beach, and treats about 2.9 million gallons (11 million litres) of sewage each day. Treated wastewater is discharged into the Pacific Ocean about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) offshore from Aliso Beach via the Aliso Creek Ocean Outfall. A pipeline carrying raw sewage downstream to the treatment plant and two pipelines carrying treated sludge back upstream to SOCWA's Regional Treatment Plant in Laguna Niguel for recycling are buried roughly parallel to the creek within Aliso Canyon, and have been frequently threatened by flooding and erosion. Sewage spills have occasionally entered the creek, forcing the closure of Aliso Beach. In 2016, the California Coastal Commission approved a project to replace the two treated sludge lines, which had deteriorated extensively over the last 30 years.
### Restoration projects
There have been several attempts to clean up the creek, stabilize its banks and restore native habitat. One of the earlier projects was Aliso Creek Wildlife Habitat Enhancement Project (ACWHEP), conceived and jointly funded by the County of Orange and the Mission Viejo Company, and intended to rehabilitate 70 acres (0.28 km<sup>2</sup>) of former riparian areas that were dried up due to downcutting of the stream channel. A 25-foot (7.6 m) high concrete dam was built about 1.4 miles (2.3 km) downstream of Aliso Creek Road, inside Aliso Canyon, to increase the water level so that the riparian area could be restored. Due to poor design as well as storm damage from 1998 flooding, the dam ended up causing further erosion of the creek downstream due to the rapid flow of water cascading over the structure, and the project was abandoned. The dam is now considered a failure risk and must be periodically grouted to maintain its stability.
In 2006 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began studies for the Aliso Creek Mainstem Ecosystem Restoration Project, which aims to control erosion and restore riparian habitat along the lower 7 miles (11 km) of the creek downstream of Pacific Park Drive, as well as short stretches of lower Wood Canyon and Sulphur Creeks. The project would remove the existing drop structures and barriers along this section of the creek and construct 47 low rock riffles to maintain a constant gradient. Parts of the creek prone to erosion would be realigned to slow down the water velocity, and the creek banks in several places would be stabilized with buried concrete walls. A total of 191 acres (77 ha) of riparian areas would be reconnected to the creek's floodplain. All non-native plant species would be removed. As of 2017 this project had an estimated cost of \$91 to \$99 million.
The USACE project has been criticized for its potential large impacts on Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Park as it would require extensive re-grading of the stream channel and banks, with 567,000 cubic yards (434,000 m<sup>3</sup>) of excavations and more than 300,000 cubic yards (230,000 m<sup>3</sup>) of fill. In addition, many of the proposed structures are intended to protect the sewer lines along Aliso Creek in Aliso Canyon, rather than for environmental restoration. The Sierra Club has advocated for the closure of the Coastal Treatment Plant in Aliso Canyon, and for wastewater to be recycled or treated at the nearby J.B. Latham plant instead, which would significantly reduce the cost of the Aliso Creek restoration project and reduce its environmental impacts. As of 2016, the Latham plant was operating at about 50 percent of its capacity.
A number of artificial wetlands have been constructed in the Aliso Creek watershed to replace historic wetlands lost to urban development. The Wood Canyon Emergent Wetland was constructed in 2005 at the head of Wood Canyon Creek in Aliso Viejo, and consists of a series of retaining ponds that slow down stormwater and support the growth of riparian vegetation. In June 2017 the Dairy Fork Wetland and Habitat Restoration Project, also in Aliso Viejo, was completed at a cost of \$1.3 million. The project was designed to collect and treat urban runoff from the 1,500 acres (610 ha) Dairy Fork tributary basin. Water flows into a series of pools where it is filtered by vegetation and bacteria are killed by prolonged exposure to sunlight, before entering 25 acres (10 ha) of restored riparian habitat along Aliso Creek. This was expected to reduce dry season pollutants by as much as 99 percent.
In October 2017 the Laguna Ocean Foundation presented a concept restoration plan for the Aliso Creek estuary, which was endorsed by Orange County Supervisor Lisa Bartlett and Senator Patricia Bates (R-Laguna Niguel). The project would remove a parking lot and artificial turf on the north side of Highway 1 in order to restore the estuary to its original 14-acre (5.7 ha) size. The estuary restoration also depends on reducing the dry weather flow in Aliso Creek, which would be accomplished by diverting a portion of the creek's flow at the Coastal Treatment Plant and feeding it into the existing recycled water system. This would lower the frequency with which water breaches the sandbar separating the estuary from the Pacific Ocean, enhancing habitat stability for species such as the tidewater goby and western pond turtle. In 2018, the sandbar was not breached over the summer for the first time in ten years.
## Parks and preservation
The Cleveland National Forest is the oldest public land in the Aliso Creek watershed, although it only encompasses a very small portion of the headwaters. The upper Aliso Creek originally became part of the Trabuco Cañon Forest Reserve – one of the first established after the Forest Reserve Act of 1891 – in 1893, before President Theodore Roosevelt formally established the Cleveland National Forest in 1908. Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, which also contains a small portion of the Aliso Creek headwaters, was set aside in the early 1900s on land donated by Dwight Whiting from the Rancho Cañada de los Alisos. At the other end of the creek, Aliso Beach has been used as a recreation area since the early 20th century, when the Thurston family created the Aliso Canyon Wagon Trail and established a campground at the beach. The County of Orange began to manage the beach in 1949. A unique diamond shaped pier was constructed in 1970, but after damage caused by the 1998 storm it was permanently removed. Today, Aliso is one of the county's most popular beaches with over one million annual visitors.
During the mid-20th century, certain tracts of land were set aside in the Aliso Creek watershed to preserve wildlife habitat and a partial greenway along the creek itself. Significant amounts of open space were also dedicated in many of the master planned communities developed along the creek. More than 35 percent of Laguna Niguel was designated as parks and open space in its master plan, as was 20 percent of Mission Viejo. The 236-acre (96 ha) Laguna Niguel Regional Park, which surrounds 44-acre (18 ha) Laguna Niguel Lake and part of Sulphur Creek, was created in 1973. Laguna Niguel Lake is regularly stocked with catfish, bass, bluegill, and trout during the winter months, and offers both shoreline fishing and boat rentals.
The future of Aliso Canyon remained uncertain into the 1970s. As part of the original development plans for the former Rancho Niguel, a six-lane highway was planned for the length of Aliso Canyon, connecting inland cities with Laguna Beach. This would have sliced directly through what is now Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Park and heavily impacted the only significant remaining natural stretch of Aliso Creek. Land for the wilderness park was first secured in April 1979 with 3,400 acres (14 km<sup>2</sup>), and small increments were added to the park until the early 1990s forming a total of 4,500 acres (18 km<sup>2</sup>). In the 1990s, Aliso and Wood Canyons became part of the South Coast Wilderness Area, a 20,000-acre (8,100 ha) group of preserves which includes the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park and Crystal Cove State Park. In 2004 a controversy arose as the Montage Resort, which had recently purchased the Aliso Creek Inn and Golf Course resort, proposed to dramatically remodel and expand the property and extending it well into the park. After opposition from environmentalists and Orange County Supervisor Tom Wilson, the plans were drastically scaled down.
The paved Aliso Creek Riding and Hiking Trail, constructed in sections starting in the 1970s, extends along the creek from Aliso Canyon to the Cleveland National Forest. The approximately 15-mile (24 km) trail is used by hikers, bicyclists and equestrians, and connects most of the major city and county parks along the creek including Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Park and Laguna Niguel Regional Park, Aliso Viejo, Creekside, Sheep Hills, Sycamore, El Toro, and Heroes Parks, and Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park. In May 2012, it was named a National Recreation Trail. The southern end of the trail terminates less than a mile (1.6 km) from Aliso Beach, with the private Aliso Creek resort in between. The county has been trying to complete the trail for many years; an early attempt in 1989 was stymied by the property owners, and a later proposal was scuttled in 2009 after the financial crisis. In March 2015 Mark Christy, the new owner of the resort, agreed to commit \$250,000 towards designing a trail through the property as part of the new "Ranch at Laguna Beach" development, though no date has been set for its completion.
## See also
- List of rivers of California
- List of rivers of Orange County, California
|
59,746,935 |
La Salute è in voi
| 1,144,564,975 |
Early 1900s bomb-making handbook associated with the Galleanisti
|
[
"1906 non-fiction books",
"American non-fiction books",
"Books about anarchism",
"Galleanisti",
"Italian-language books"
] |
La Salute è in voi! was an early 1900s bomb-making handbook associated with the Galleanisti, followers of anarchist Luigi Galleani, particularly in the United States. Translated as "Health Is in You!" or "Salvation Is within You!", its anonymous authors advocated for impoverished workers to overcome their despair and commit to individual, revolutionary acts. The Italian-language handbook offered plain directions to give non-technical amateurs the means to build explosives. Though this technical content was already available in encyclopedias, applied chemistry books, and industrial sources, La Salute è in voi wrapped this content within a political manifesto. Its contents included a glossary, basic chemistry training, and safety procedures. Its authors were likely Galleani and his friend Ettore Molinari, a chemist and anarchist.
The handbook was first advertised in Galleani's Cronaca Sovversiva, an anarchist newspaper, read by his American followers, in 1906. American police and historians would use the handbook to profile anarchists and imply guilt by possession. A decade after its release, La Salute è in voi! figured prominently in the prosecution of the 1915 Bresci Circle failed bombing of New York City's St. Patrick's Cathedral, in which the case revolved around the anarchists' right to read. Ultimately, the idea of amateurs learning to make bombs from simple instructions was impractical, as the perpetrators of successful political bombings from this era had career backgrounds in explosives.
## Contents
This how-to handbook and anarchist manifesto encouraged workers to forgo their anguish, which only furthered their impoverishment, and instead commit to revolutionary acts. It called for vengeance against oppressors and for finding "redemption" through "audacious revolt". La Salute è in voi acknowledged that workers could not foment that revolution without the technical means and so provided readers plain directions for producing explosives. Chapters include "Explosive Material", "Nitroglycerin", "Capsule and Petard", "Dynamite", "Fulminate of Mercury", and "Preparation of Fuses".
It opens with an appeal to collective gain from individual action, using the example of an Italian town where rice laborers went on strike for wages in 1890. During their march to city hall, one hit a guard with a rock and the police fired on the crowd, killing three workers and wounding more, but ultimately the laborers gained their raise by dint of those martyred. As an instruction manual, the book contains tips such as pre-testing explosives in the countryside, buying pure chemicals from pharmacists or dealers, purchasing from multiple vendors to avoid suspicion, and excuses to use if a vendor becomes suspicious.
The handbook presents information in practical terms for laypeople, similar to a household textbook reference or farmer's almanac. It includes chemistry training, such as a Baumé scale to measure liquid density and determine the potency of compounds, but also provides potential household uses for the chemicals mentioned. It also includes safety procedures (e.g., if a reader drank nitric acid) and a glossary of terms and definitions. Its level of technical detail distinguished the handbook from other anarchist manifestos.
## Publication
Similar to John Most's Revolutionäre Kriegswissenschaft, La Salute è in voi was written to make military technology accessible to lay readers without chemistry and engineering expertise, such as the textile workers and anarchist writers of the eastern United States, who were inspired by other bombings but otherwise lacked occupational access to dynamite and practical experience in bomb-making. Composed in elementary Italian, La Salute è in voi uses Italian terms and costs in lira. Although its level of scientific detail regarding chemical-handling technique elevated the handbook from mere anarchist manifesto, none of its contents were new. Its simple information was available in regular encyclopedias, applied chemistry books, and industrial sources, such as Martin Eissler's 1897 standard manual on explosives. La Salute è in voi did not contain complex formulas or time-detonator instructions.
La Salute è in voi was written anonymously. Its authors called themselves "the compilers" and displayed a working familiarity with basic chemistry. This emphasis on science is likely owed to Ettore Molinari, a chemist and anarchist believed to have drafted an early version of the handbook, if not the full book. Historians have been unable to find Molinari's Guerra all’oppressore (Italian for 'War Against Oppressors'), an earlier bomb-making manual that circulated among European anarchists. In Paris, Molinari had befriended the Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani, whose Italian-language, American anarchist newspaper, Cronaca Sovversiva (Italian for 'Subversion Chronicle'), would publish La Salute è in voi in the United States and introduce these technical instructions to his followers, the Galleanisti. Galleani likely wrote the introductory reader note and poem himself.
Cronaca Sovversiva first advertised La Salute è in voi for purchase in 1906 among other publications printed by the newspaper on its back page. It was the newspaper's most expensive pamphlet: 25¢ (). La Salute è in voi featured more prominently in later editions of the newspaper as "an indispensable pamphlet for those comrades who love self-instruction".
The 48-page handbook is tall and oblong, bound in red covers. Its title, which translates to "Health Is in You!" or "Salvation Is within You!", may be an ironic reference to Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You, which shares its Italian title with the bomb-making handbook. Unlike the Galleanisti, Tolstoy favored passive resistance and considered violence incompatible with Christian morality. The handbook's cover illustration is a 1893 woodcut by French artist Charles Maurin depicting the French anarchist Ravachol in front of a guillotine, growing crops, and a symbolic new dawn.
The printing contains a typographical error in which an "i", displayed as "1", would severely undercut the proportion of sulfuric acid in the nitroglycerin formula. Cronaca Sovversiva later ran a correction. Though some historians surmised that this error led to errant explosions, realistically the incorrect formula would have produced a mess of acids rather than the much more volatile nitroglycerin.
## Application
The police used the handbook to profile anarchist attackers, and historians have used the handbook as evidence of Galleanist responsibility for crimes. La Salute è in voi had a low profile for the nine years prior to the 1915 Bresci Circle's attempted bombing of New York City's St. Patrick's Cathedral. Though the handbook was never mentioned by name, it figured prominently in the prosecution of the Bresci Circle members; the prosecution used it to vilify the defendants despite no proof of its connection to the crime. During and prior to arraignment one of the anarchists credited the handbook with deranging him, but the defendants' failed bomb components did not match those outlined in the handbook. The police insinuated that possession of the handbook constituted evidence of the defendants' technical expertise and bad intentions. La Salute è in voi was the most sensational of the prosecution's seditious books used to show the anarchists' intents. The anarchists' legal defense revolved around their right to read any books of any kind, including bomb-making handbooks. They were ultimately found guilty. The case rekindled fear of easily accessible bomb-making instructions and sensationalism around anarchism.
The handbook's authors believed that amateurs would be able to build explosives by following simple directions but, in actuality, the era's successful perpetrators of political bombings had backgrounds in explosives from their respective industries. Workers in industries such as agriculture, construction, and mining had their own means for learning to make bombs or steal dynamite. Ann Larabee has written that the idea that untrained laborers could create bombs at home was and remains impractical, no more than an intellectual exercise. The book did contain elements for neophytes, such as safety procedure and household uses for chemicals, which could double as cover stories and enhanced the handbook's subversiveness. There is no evidence that Galleanists relied on La Salute è in voi but, if they did, the fact that their bombs hit only themselves and bystanders, never their intended capitalist and government targets, would indicate that the handbook provided insufficient preparation for an attack.
After Sacco and Vanzetti, the Italian–American anarchists and international cause cèlébre, were denied appeal and condemned to death, they signed their final, written communique to supporters with "La Salute è in voi". Its invocation represented power through threat of violence. Though there is no direct evidence that they possessed or used a copy, especially as a bomb was not involved in their case, detectives and historians have thought of the handbook's existence among Galleanists as evidence of a broader conspiracy. For example, J. Edgar Hoover's investigation of the separate Wall Street bombing involved a dogged pursuit of a copy of the handbook. Robert D'Attilio, a scholar of the Sacco and Vanzetti case, described the pamphlet as "the great unmentioned fact" of the trial, spoken of by neither the prosecution nor the defense, yet nonetheless felt in the courtroom, which had been outfitted in advance of the trial with steel doors and bomb shutters to seal off the wing in the event of an bombing attack. D'Attilio argued that both parties in the case had reasons for not mentioning the pamphlet: the prosecution, to avoid the appearance of collusion with federal investigations into the Galleanists, and the defense, to avoid alienating the jury amid the societal repression of alien radicals.
After Sacco and Vanzetti, La Salute è in voi disappeared from public view, owing partially to its limited accessibility, based on its Italian language requirement, and limited topical interest. A 1979 presentation at the Boston Public Library's Sacco and Vanzetti conference renewed interest in the booklet.
|
16,217,267 |
Coventry ring road
| 1,136,939,985 |
Road in England
|
[
"Roads in Coventry"
] |
The A4053 Coventry ring road is a 2.25-mile (3.62 km) ring road in Coventry, England, which forms a complete dual-carriageway loop around the city centre. The road encompasses the old and new Coventry Cathedrals, the city's shopping areas and much of Coventry University. With the exception of one roundabout at junction 1, the ring road's nine junctions are entirely grade separated and closely spaced, with weaving sections between them, some as short as 300 yards (270 m), giving the road a reputation for being difficult to navigate. The junctions include connections with three other A roads: the A4114, A4600 and A429.
From the 1930s, Coventry City Council began replacing the city's narrow medieval streets with modern roads, to cope with a rapidly growing population. City architect Donald Gibson began work in 1939 on a city centre redevelopment plan which expanded in scope following World War II, in which large areas of the city were destroyed by German bombs. The shopping area was rebuilt first, followed by the ring road, which was constructed in six stages from 1959. Early stages were built with at-grade junctions, cycle tracks and footpaths, envisaged as a surface-level linear park. Following traffic surveys in the early 1960s, however, the council amended the design to include grade separation and the weaving sections. Research by the city engineer indicated that it was the first urban road in the world to use this configuration at such a small scale. The road was completed in 1974, with an overall cost of £14.5 million ().
As one of the few British cities to see its ring road project pushed to completion, Coventry has received considerable attention as a source of research for post-war architecture. An article by BBC News noted that opinions about the road were varied, concluding that "you either love it or you hate it". The road was the subject of a 2015 series of poetry films and driving on it has been likened to driving a Scalextric car and riding on a roller coaster.
## Route description
The ring road forms a complete dual-carriageway loop around the city centre of Coventry, with the designation A4053 in the Great Britain road numbering scheme. It is 2.25 miles (3.62 km) in length and is a primary route throughout. The road encloses an area containing the old and new Coventry Cathedrals, much of Coventry University, shopping areas such as the Upper Precinct, Lower Precinct, West Orchards and Cathedral Lanes, the medieval Spon Street and the Coventry Skydome.
Being a complete ring road, it does not have unique start or end points. Junction 1, the road's only at-grade junction and its northernmost point, is a roundabout with four exits: the eastbound and westbound ring roads, the B4113 Foleshill Road to the north and Tower Street to the south. Proceeding east (clockwise), junction 2 is a grade separated junction with Hales Street, White Street and Bird Street and the closest to Pool Meadow Bus Station. Between junctions 2 and 4, the carriageway rises to become an elevated highway called the Swanswell viaduct. Junction 3 is the easternmost on the circuit, providing access to the A4600 Sky Blue Way, which is the former route of the A46 and the signed route from Coventry to Leicester via the M69, as well as linking to the M6. Junction 3 also serves the A428 to Rugby and the A444 to Nuneaton, via a pair of junctions half a mile (0.8 kilometres) to the east.
Continuing clockwise, the road runs due south to junction 4 with the A4114 London Road. This road links to both the A46 southbound towards the M40 motorway, and also to the A45 eastbound, taking traffic to the M45 and M1 motorways towards London. The main lanes of the anticlockwise carriageway at junction 4 lead to the exit, meaning through ring road traffic must move to the left, and then subsequently move back to the right to avoid the junction 3 exit.
Junction 5 provides access to the south-eastern part of the city centre, via the B4544 New Union Street, and also links to a pair of roads heading south towards the suburb of Cheylesmore. Junction 6, the southernmost junction, links to the A429 Warwick Road, signposted for Kenilworth, and is also the exit for the War Memorial Park, the University of Warwick and Coventry railway station, which lies just outside the ring road loop. From junction 6, the clockwise carriageway proceeds north west. Junction 7 is the B4101 Butts Road radial, linking to the suburb of Earlsdon, the ring road passing over on the Moat Street flyover, while it passes under junction 8 for the A4114 Holyhead Road towards Birmingham, formerly the A45 westbound. The road then runs north east through junction 9 for the B4098 Radford Road radial, which it passes over on the Hill Cross flyover, before arriving back at the junction 1 roundabout.
## History
### Background
The road layout within Coventry and its road links to other settlements were developed during the Middle Ages, becoming stable by the 17th century. During the 19th century, some roads were upgraded to turnpike status, but development was slow due to difficulty in securing funding, and much of the city's road network consisted of narrow medieval streets. An exception was Thomas Telford's road from London to Holyhead, built through Coventry between 1827 and 1830. Telford used advanced engineering techniques for the time with good drainage and stone foundations, and the road became the major route between London and Birmingham, replacing an older route along Spon Street.
In the early 20th century, Coventry was the fastest-growing city in the UK as people relocated from across the country to work in the expanding automotive, bicycle, aviation and armament industries. The city's boundaries expanded in stages, absorbing nearby villages as well as new residential areas. Coventry City Council upgraded the city's radial roads but the city centre retained its medieval character until 1930. By then, the buildings and infrastructure were unable to cope with the needs of the increased population and the council tasked city engineer Ernest Ford with modernising it. During the 1930s, Ford oversaw the construction of Corporation Street and Trinity Street as well as widening other roads. This involved large-scale demolition and relocation of residents to other areas, and created the first sections of inner ring road, on what is now the inner circulatory route. He also created the southern bypass, re-routing the A45 and London to Birmingham traffic around the city. In early 1939, the council appointed Donald Gibson as city architect. A protégé of Patrick Abercrombie at the University of Liverpool School of Architecture, Gibson assembled a team of young architects, with whom he produced plans more radical than Ford's. These were presented to the public at an exhibition in summer 1940 and included a new civic zone north east of the cathedral.
In November 1940 and April 1941, following the outbreak of World War II, the city was attacked by the Luftwaffe in the Coventry Blitz. Large areas, including the cathedral, were left in ruins. Needing to rebuild rapidly, the council instructed Gibson and Ford to work together to agree on a blueprint for the city centre. Shortly after the first bombing, they met Lord Reith, the government minister responsible for rebuilding, who advised them to plan the reconstruction "boldly and comprehensively" even if this meant high costs. The two men did not work well together and they eventually produced two separate plans; Ford's emphasised maintaining as much of the existing architecture as possible while getting businesses running again, while Gibson advocated a comprehensive redesign with a new layout and modern architecture. Gibson's plan included the use of ring roads to divert traffic away from the city centre. The pair presented their competing visions in February 1941, and the council decided to adopt Gibson's.
Gibson developed his plan throughout the war, releasing an updated version in October 1945 at an the "Coventry of the Future" exhibition. The council started work on the project in 1946, laying a commemorative stone on the future site of the shopping precinct and beginning the conversion of Broadgate, the city's historic hub, into a green central square. This first phase was opened in 1948 by the future Queen Elizabeth II, with a statue of Lady Godiva added a year later.
### Planning the ring road
Gibson's 1941 plan called for "a system of radial and ring roads", the innermost ring centred on a proposed civic centre east of the Council House. His intention was to use existing roads wherever possible, widening them to dual carriageways and linking them to the radial roads with roundabouts. In his 1945 "Coventry of the Future" plan, Gibson moved the proposed route of the ring road to the north and west of the 1941 version, with the new alignment centred on Broadgate. This new route no longer followed Corporation Street and Queen Victoria Road, and Gibson designated the land between these and the ring-road route for light industry. The government did not initially approve the new route, citing a concern that it encircled too much of the city. But the council's position was that the ring road could not run on Corporation Street and Queen Victoria Road as planned, due to the need for businesses to have direct access to those roads, and therefore must be sited further north west. The plan included provision for the inner circulatory route, a loop comprising existing roads inside the ring road, to serve as a distributor within the city centre. The 1945 plan also featured two additional ring roads – a middle ring passing through the suburbs, and an outer ring extending the existing A45 southern bypass.
Gibson and the council made minor changes to the design during the subsequent years including the addition of two new roundabouts, to make a total of nine. The council and the government then agreed the final design in 1948. This retained many of Gibson's early ideas including a dual-carriageway layout, lanes for cyclists and pedestrians on both sides, and at-grade roundabout junctions connecting to all of the major radial routes out of the city. The route was to be 2.25 miles (3.62 km) long and would follow some existing routes, with new alignments for the remainder. Although the plan was agreed and signed off, the council did not begin construction immediately. Funding was limited following the economic hardship of the war, and the council's priority was the rebuilding of bomb-damaged areas in the city centre and completing the precinct, to enable businesses and shops to resume full operation. The city-centre work lasted throughout the first half of the 1950s, as the council and businesses had to negotiate the use of the space and conduct lengthy planning applications, as well as completing the construction work. The ring-road plan remained active and planners ensured that no new structures were situated close to the proposed route, to maintain its availability for road development.
In 1955, with the upper level of the precinct completed, Gibson left Coventry to become county architect for Nottinghamshire. His replacement as Coventry's city architect was Arthur Ling, who had been Senior Planning Officer for the London County Council since 1946. Ling continued Gibson's work in developing the city centre while also reviewing details of the development plan. He updated the proposals to include pedestrianisation of the north–south axis of the precinct, while noting that city centre traffic congestion remained a major issue, which would be worsened by the extended pedestrianisation. The council lobbied the government for permission and funding for the long-delayed ring road. The government had reduced investment expenditure significantly from late 1955, and in 1956 the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (MOT) denied the council permission to build the entire road, indicating that only the south-eastern portion was likely to be approved at that time. Despite this, the council in 1957 approved and submitted a plan for the full route, divided into six stages with a time estimate of six or seven years.
### Stage one: London Road – Quinton Road
The first stage of the ring road built was a 439-yard (401 m) stretch south east of the city centre, from what is now junction 4 at London Road to junction 5 at Quinton Road. This section was intended to relieve nearby Parkside, Short Street and Much Park Street, which were heavily congested with traffic entering Coventry from London Road. The design was based on Gibson's 1940s plan, which included cycle tracks and footpaths on both sides, and envisaged it as a surface-level "linear park". The carriageways in stages one and two were 24 feet (7.3 m) wide, while the adjacent cycle tracks had a width of 12 feet (3.7 m) and the pedestrian pavements 8 feet (2.4 m). The MOT approved stage one in December 1957, pledging 75 per cent of the estimated £310,000 cost () for the stage. The MOT justified the grant, which was higher than was normal for the central government at the time, by citing Coventry's status as a "blitz city".
After receiving MOT approval, the council began negotiations with businesses and homeowners along the proposed route, to purchase their properties for demolition. Compulsory purchase orders were issued in June 1958, and by the end of the year most of the affected properties were empty and awaiting demolition. The council also announced the closure of parts of Parkside, St Patrick's Road and Quinton Road for the duration of the project. By April 1959, demolition of unoccupied properties was underway and the council served eviction orders on the remaining properties on the route. This included five pubs and several houses and shops. Some features of the demolished areas were retained in the new road, for example stone setts from St John's Street, which were relaid as the divide between the cycle tracks and pavements.
On 1 July 1959, with the demolition work almost complete, construction on the Coventry ring road began. Pirelli General Cable Works contractors laid nine long tons (9,100 kg) of power cable underneath the roadways, after which the route was levelled in preparation for the laying of foundations, which began in mid-August. The foundation consisted of at least 6 inches (150 mm) of crushed stone, with 4 inches (100 mm) of lean concrete above it, topped with 8-inch (200 mm) thick concrete slabs. The surface was tarmac, which contractors began laying in early September. With one carriageway fully tarmacked by late November, the council considered opening that side early, around 8 December, but ultimately they decided to open both carriageways together.
By December 1959, the contractors were in the final stages of construction. Several roads at the end of the stretch were closed temporarily to allow it to be joined to the existing road network. Sodium lights, mounted on 35-foot (11 m) poles, were installed between the carriageways. Stage one was opened on 23 December 1959, Lord Mayor William Henry Edwards cutting a ribbon before being driven along the road in his civic car. There were traffic lights at each end at the time of opening, although stage two work on the London Road roundabout at stage one's eastern end commenced shortly afterwards.
### Stage two: Bishop Street – Hill Street, and London Road roundabout
Stage two consisted of two separate projects – a roundabout at the eastern end of stage one and a new stretch of road to the north west of the city centre. The government approved stage two on 28 November 1958, providing a grant of £232,000 () towards total costs of £310,000 (). The new road began at Hill Cross and ran roughly along the line of King Street to Swanswell Terrace, a total distance of 480 yards (440 m). Like stage one, the stage featured cycle paths and pedestrian pavements on both sides, as well as a junction with Bishop Street. The cost eventually grew to £535,445 (), including compensation to landowners.
After compulsory purchase orders were issued and all objections resolved, demolition of properties had begun by March 1960, including the Canal Offices building and properties on King Street. A 29-foot (8.8 m) section of Coventry's ancient city wall and a square watchtower were discovered during the excavation, dating to between 1350 and 1400. The wall section had been incorporated into the cellar wall of an 18th-century property on King Street, which was among those demolished. A team of archaeologists led by Charmian Woodfield worked on the site for the next year, discovering a medieval cesspit containing 15th century pottery and a trench outside the wall which was built for additional protection. As of 2022, the watchtower and a short section of the wall surrounding it remain in place. Demolition was slow, due to issues with relocating residents as well as squatters, and was still ongoing at the end of 1960.
By June 1961, excavation was underway at the northern end of Bishop Street to process piping and electrical services. The foundations were laid from July 1961, starting with the southern side of the road, and work on the roadway had begun by early August. Engineers began tarmacking the southbound stretch from Swanswell Terrace to Hill Cross during the week of 14 August, opening it to traffic on 22 August, with the northbound carriageway following on 8 November. At the time of opening, the road had at-grade temporary junctions with Bishop Street and the old Radford Road (now Leicester Row), as the new radials linking those roads to the ring road were not yet complete. Unlike stage one, stage two had no opening ceremony – the road opened when construction workers moved barriers away from the access roads and traffic began to use it immediately.
Stage two also included the separate roundabout project at the eastern end of the stretch constructed in stage one, at the junction with London Road, Gulson Road, Whitefriars Street and Paradise Street. To facilitate the construction of the roundabout, the council issued compulsory purchase orders on buildings owned by various shops and businesses close to the site. Two of these businesses, a petrol station and a scrap metal merchant, objected to the purchase and an inquiry was held. The council argued that the petrol station was too close to the road and that it would be difficult to secure access routes from the new layout. The Minister of Transport upheld the landowners' appeal, agreeing with them that much of the land was not required for the road. The plans therefore had to be altered. Construction of the roundabout necessitated the destruction of most houses in Paradise Street, and its residents moved out in early 1960. It opened to traffic in December 1960, with peripheral work and finishing continuing for a further few months.
### Traffic surveys and redesign
By 1960, despite stage one being open and stage two underway, the council realised that it needed a better understanding of Coventry's long-term traffic requirements. There was little vehicle-movement data recorded at the time, and theory for large-scale car use in cities was not well developed. The council therefore carried out a survey to establish traffic patterns. Interviewers were stationed close to the planned line of the ring road, where they asked drivers their origin and destination. The results of the survey were published in late 1960, predicting a 150 per cent increase in light traffic and a 75 per cent increase in heavy traffic during the subsequent twenty years. The city engineer decided that the plans as they stood would be insufficient to cater for this growth. In particular, the placing of nine roundabouts on the road was predicted to lead to considerable congestion. To remedy this, the council investigated the use of grade-separated junctions to replace the planned surface roundabouts. The use of such junctions had not at the time been tested at the scale required in Coventry, either in Europe or the United States. But the Road Research Laboratory, at the time a UK government agency, had produced a formula for safe traffic weaving distances between such junctions. Using this, the city engineer concluded that the ring road's layout could cope with grade separation, and recommended its use going forward.
In 1961, the council began a thorough review of its road transport policy. The city's planning department had begun to question the entire ring-road concept, arguing that it was not the most effective way to reduce congestion and created a damaging divide between urban communities and the city centre. A fresh traffic study was launched, producing a development plan for the transport needs of the whole city, which continued for much of the next ten years and produced several large volumes of results. The council determined early in the study that it would proceed with the ring road, but remodelled to include grade separation. The road's character was to be quite different from that of Gibson's design, with the cycle paths removed to make way for wider lanes and slip roads, and the "linear park" concept replaced with a largely elevated motorway-type road. After completion of the ring road, the development plan's long-term goals included construction of a Y-shaped pair of high-capacity "urban motor roads" in the suburbs, catering for traffic growth through to the 1980s. One of these roads was to be aligned north–south and the other east–west, providing uninterrupted dual-carriageway links between the ring road, the A45 and A46 roads in the south and the M6 motorway in the north.
### Stage three: Moat Street flyover and Butts radial
The third stage to be built, and the first with grade separation, was the section on the western side of the city centre, between Holyhead Road in the north and Queen's Road in the south. The route was previously occupied by low-cost housing and small factories. This completed junction 7, with the road passing over the junction on a 1,000-foot (300 m) overpass known as the Moat Street flyover. It also divided Spon Street into two disconnected sections. The flyover was built using steel girders, a technique not commonly used for bridges at the time, the project benefiting from an ongoing downturn in the construction steel industry which enabled it to source material more cheaply.
Compulsory purchase orders were made in August 1961, with demolition beginning in September 1962 and preparatory work for the flyover commencing by November. Construction was carried out by several companies: Dorman, Long and Co. erected the steel supports for the flyover and McKinney Foundations the piling, with the main carriageway work carried out initially by local firm G. R. Yeomans. But in December 1963 the City Engineer, Granville Berry, ended Yeomans' contract, citing a lack of progress, poor workmanship and the company's financial health as reasons. Galliford & Sons took over to complete the remainder of the work.
The Moat Street flyover was completed in November 1964, and it had been anticipated that it would open at that time. But with the Butts radial road not yet complete the council decided to defer this, citing potential driver confusion at the southern end if complex temporary measures were put in place. Traffic was routed between Queen's Road and Spon Street via the new road's slip roads for a few months and in May 1965 the flyover opened to traffic, connecting the same two roads. A car park in the centre of the junction's roundabout was in use by August 1965, serving employees of the General Electric Company's plant in Spon Street.
Along with stage three, the city also constructed two link roads to the new Moat Street junction. The first was the Butts radial road, for which construction began in July 1965. This was built by Turriff Construction of Warwick, and its purpose was to provide access to the ring road from Coventry's south-western suburbs. It ran from the Moat Street junction to The Butts, joining the existing road network close to the then Coventry Technical College. It was completed and opened in late May 1966, with a pair of subways under the radial and the Moat Street roundabout allowing pedestrian access to the city centre. The second new road was Croft Street on the city side of the roundabout, which opened in July 1965 and, , carries traffic through to the inner-circulatory route at Queen Victoria Road.
### Stage four: Hill Cross – Holyhead Road
The fourth stage of the project was the missing link joining stage two to stage three and included completion of junctions 8 and 9. Work on this stage was closely aligned with that on stage three as the two connected with each other at Holyhead Road and stage four preparation and building began before much of the prior stage was opened. The council selected the principal stage three contractor, Galliford, as the primary contractor for stage four, including the Radford radial, while McKinney and Dorman Long once again performed the piling and the steelwork respectively. PSC Equipment were also involved for post-tensioning work on the concrete. The council had originally intended to make an advance order for the steel required for stage four in 1962, following the successful and economical work done on stage three. But the government vetoed this plan, and by 1964 when the Hill Cross materials were ordered, the steel market had recovered and costs were significantly higher.
Compulsory purchase orders were made in 1963, and were approved by the ministry. Preparatory work, including rerouting of sewers under Hill Street, and temporary diversions began in October 1964. The link between the two sections of Holyhead Road was severed permanently from the beginning of 1965 with slip roads from Spon Street to Holyhead Road, to allow work to begin on junction 8. Holyhead Road was left as a dead end on the city-centre side, causing loss of trade for businesses on that section. Dorman Long began erecting the steel girders in May 1965, transporting them from their Middlesbrough factory by train. Work on the roundabout underneath the junction, slip roads and the Radford radial also began around the same time. By November, all steelwork was in place for the flyover, and it was ready for the concrete surface to be laid.
The Radford radial was completed first and opened to traffic in February 1966, linking the ring road to Radford Road. The section of the old Radford Road on the city side was cut off from the rest and left as a dead end. The slip roads were brought into use in early June, allowing traffic to travel between the junctions but not yet on the flyover or the underpass. This opened up a through route from junction 6 in the south all the way through to junction 1 in the north, via the Moat Street flyover and the stage four slip roads, allowing traffic to bypass the city centre for the first time. The Hill Cross flyover and Holyhead Road underpasses were both opened on 18 July 1966, three months ahead of schedule, with construction workers removing the barriers and allowing traffic to flow.
### Stage five: Foleshill Road – London Road
Stage five comprised the eastern section, linking the stage two and stage one sections between junction 1 and junction 4. The section included the building of junctions 2 and 3. The line of the stage crossed the River Sherbourne, downstream from the city centre, where surveyors found an artesian aquifer. This difficult terrain and the grade-separated junctions made it impractical to build the road at ground level so an elevated carriageway was constructed while also culverting the river as it ran underneath junction 3. This extended an existing culvert which had been built during the 1950s and 1960s, taking the river underground for most of its route through the city centre. Steel prices had increased during the construction of stages three and four, so the council decided to use pre-stressed concrete supports rather than steel. They programmed a LEO III computer to assist with predicting the structural load on the roadway. Stage five was the longest to date with a length of 1,200 yards (1,100 m), of which 950 yards (870 m) were elevated. It was also the most expensive to date, with an eventual cost of £4.6 million () including land purchases.
Detailed plans for the stage were released in June 1965 during the construction of stages three and four, with compulsory purchase orders for the properties on the route issued at the same time. The contract for the construction of the project was put out to tender in late 1966, with Galliford chosen once again. Demolition and clearing of the route was underway by late 1967, and a £3.2 million MOT grant () was approved, despite a government freeze on public spending at the time. It was projected to take two and a half years to complete. Work began in March 1968, and by June of that year the culverting work on the Sherbourne and erection of the concrete vertical supports was underway, with around six columns completed every week. From September 1968, a total of 765 concrete box beams were brought by road from the Dow-Mac concrete plants at Tallington and Gloucester, each weighing around 41 long tons (42 t) with lengths up to 82 feet (25 m). T-beams were also imported for use on the slip roads. Galliford used a pair of 50-long-ton (51 t) cranes to lift the beams into place. Beam laying was finished in mid-1969 and was followed by approximately ten months of road surfacing and finishing, including decorative slabs made with white spar from the Isle of Skye, which the designers hoped would "soften the starkness" of the concrete.
The 400-yard (370 m) stretch from junction 1 to junction 2 opened first, in August 1969. The road linking Foleshill Road with Stoney Stanton Road and the Coventry & Warwickshire Hospital was closed to traffic, other than buses and ambulances, with other vehicles using the ring road and White Street. The remainder of the stage was completed on schedule with an official ceremony on 4 June 1970 at St Mary's Guildhall and inaugural drive on the road by the Lord Mayor, followed by the opening of the road to the public. The completion of stage five meant that only the southern section between St Patrick's Road and the Queen's Road remained to be completed, and traffic could circumnavigate the city centre without having to use the inner circulatory road. Despite this, the council found that many motorists were continuing to use the old routes in the immediate aftermath of the opening.
### Stage six: London Road – Queen's Road
The final stage covered the section south of the city centre, completing the full ring by joining the end of stage five at junction 4 with stage three at Queen's Road and constructing junctions 5 and 6. The stage replaced part of St Patrick's Road and included a rebuild of stage one, to upgrade it to the full-width grade-separated standard of the later sections. The cost was estimated in 1971 to be around £5.5 million (), of which slightly more than £4 million () was to be covered by a government grant. It had initially been proposed in the early 1960s that the work in the area would include widening the A429 Warwick Road, but there was local opposition citing the loss of 47 mature trees and the plan was abandoned.
Compulsory purchase orders for this phase were issued in late 1969. An inquiry was held in July 1970, examining two outstanding objections from property owners, but the MOT approved the stage, noting that the public benefits of building the stage outweighed the objections. Two monuments were temporarily removed during the construction work and put into storage. The first was the Coventry Martyrs memorial, located in a small garden at the intersection of Quinton Road and Park Road – it was eventually put back in the centre of the junction 5 roundabout. The other was the monument to the nineteenth century bicycle entrepreneur James Starley, which was taken from Greyfriars Green and put into storage, then relocated to another position on the green after work was complete.
Stage six was opened with an official ceremony on 19 September 1974. There was a minor dispute between the city council and the newly formed West Midlands County Council regarding the attendees at the ceremony. The latter authority had been given responsibility for transport across the county in April 1974 and supervised the final few months of the work, which meant they were responsible for the opening. But representatives of the city council, which had managed the ring-road project for most of its 25-year duration, felt that they should be leading the occasion. The Lord Mayor of Coventry, Dennis Berry, cut a length of tape across the junction 6 underpass to declare it open. In his speech, he congratulated officials from the council who had overseen the project since its inception, but also lamented the "frustration and delay" which had lengthened the work from its original six-year timetable. There were also speeches by two officials from the county council. After 14 years the ring road was complete, with a final overall cost of £14.5 million ().
### Later developments
In 2004, Coventry's city council developed an urban renewal plan centred around the Swanswell area, which lies north east of the city centre and is bisected by the ring road. The initial draft, written by the Urban Initiatives organisation, described the ring road as having a "barrier effect" on the area and contained proposals to reduce or eliminate this. Four options were proposed: to remove junction 2 of the road, to replace the elevated road between junctions 1 and 3 with a surface street, to replace the elevated section with a tunnel or to keep the road more-or-less as it was. The 2004 draft labelled the surface-street option as its preferred solution, but a 2007 public report on the initiative stated that the council preferred the removal of junction 2, with leaving the road unchanged as the preferred option if removing the junction proved infeasible. In 2017, the council produced an action plan for the city centre which continued to note the obstructive effect of the road and retained removal of junction 2's slip roads as an "opportunity" which existed, but as of 2022 the road around Swanswell remained in its original configuration. In 2017 and 2020, the council undertook major refurbishment of the Swanswell section and added signage saying "Welcome to Coventry" on the viaduct there.
In 2014–15, the council carried out a major redevelopment of junction 6. In the biggest alteration to the ring road's layout since it opened, the roundabout and pedestrian bridges at the junction were removed and replaced with a 110-yard (100 m) wide deck, the ring road running underneath. The scheme, part of a wider development creating the Friargate business district, cost £14.9 million to complete. Once built, the deck was landscaped to provide a link to Greyfriars Green to the north, a pedestrian walkway providing a continuous link between Coventry railway station to the south and the city centre to the north. The redeveloped junction retained three of the four movements on and off the ring road from Warwick Road, but the ability to join the eastbound carriageway was removed. Two days after the development was officially opened, the ring road was temporarily closed underneath the new deck, hosting a racing circuit as part of the Coventry MotoFest.
In 2021, the UK government mandated the city council to improve Coventry's air quality as part of efforts to reduce nitrogen dioxide (NO
<sub>2</sub>) levels. The area with the highest NO
<sub>2</sub> was around Spon End and Holyhead Road, and the government said it would impose a Clean Air Zone in that area if the council failed to make improvements. In response, the council proposed changes affecting the ring road, including a redesign of junction 7 and a new link between the junction 8 clockwise exit slip road and Upper Hill Street. The goal of the latter change was to avoid a bottleneck on Holyhead Road for ring-road traffic destined for Coundon Road, but this was in doubt due to the need to acquire land and opposition from a primary school on the route. The junction 7 work began in April 2022, involving removal of the roundabout at that junction and its replacement with a direct route under the flyover from the Butts radial into the city centre. This work is expected to be complete in 2023.
## Design and construction
The ring road forms a complete loop around Coventry city centre and is entirely grade separated with the exception of junction 1. The weaving distance between junctions is only 300 feet (90 m) in places and research by Brian Redknap, city engineer during the construction of the road, indicated that it was it was the first urban road in the world to use grade separation and weaving at such a small scale. The Ringway St Nicholas section, between junctions 9 and 1, retains pavements on both sides as well as the cycle track on the anti-clockwise side, per the stage two specification. Following the junction 6 redesign, a 110-yard (100 m)-wide walkway crosses over the ring road underpass to link the railway station and the city centre. On all other sections pedestrian areas are segregated from the road by fences and walls, with foot access between the inside and outside achieved via a series of bridges and subways. The road is not an official motorway and it is legal for cyclists to use it, but after the decision in the early 1960s to drop the road's cycle lanes and convert it to a full grade-separated dual carriageway, most cyclists consider it too dangerous.
The ring road features a number of different junction designs, reflecting the nature of the road in the area concerned as well as the dates at which the stages were completed. The two elevated junctions constructed during stages three and four – Moat Street and Hill Cross – utilise a roundabout with slip roads and a flyover. The designers chose a viaduct structure rather than an embankment at these junctions and positioned the abutments some distance from the roundabouts and slip roads, to maximise visibility. The close spacing of all nine junctions necessitated a trade-off between the gradient of the slip roads and the length of the weaving space between the junctions. The designers gave the latter consideration relatively more importance than the former, with the result that the slip lanes are all quite steep, ranging from 5.5 to 7.1 per cent gradient. The junction 2 slip roads have an unusual design – the proximity to the Foleshill Road junction led the designers to position all of the lanes to the south of White Street, the north-facing lanes forming curved loops underneath the main carriageway.
In the early 1960s it was planned for there to be direct links between the ring road and rooftop car parks in the central shopping area via a series of bridges, to reduce traffic on surface roads. This plan, which would have involved further demolition of properties, was later abandoned on the grounds of cost and practicality with access to car parks instead provided via the inner circulatory road. A number of new car parks were built, with space for 10,000 vehicles arranged such that long-stay parking was close to the ring road and short-stay closer to the shopping areas. Several of the car parks are situated directly underneath the elevated sections of the road itself, including under the long stretch in the east built during stage five and, until the 2020s junction 7 rebuild, inside the roundabout under the Moat Street flyover. The latter was initially reserved on weekdays for employees of the General Electric Company factory in Spon Street but it later became a full-time public car park. Junction 2 has a coach park, constructed in the spaces enclosed by the junction's curved slip lanes.
## Reception and popular culture
The city council and the ring road's engineers generally regarded it as a success. Speaking in a 2009 documentary produced in partnership with the Coventry Transport Museum, Duncan Elliott, the council's head of city centre property development, said that the road "works brilliantly", citing a lack of traffic congestion in the area as well as the low accident rate – he described it as "probably the safest road in Coventry". In the same production Redknap noted that it was designed for the predicted traffic flows in 1981, but said that in 2009 it "still worked extremely well, considering it was 25 years beyond the design period".
The road also has some critics, for example architects Caroline and Jeremy Gould, who wrote that "the tight circle drawn by the ring road and its configuration as an urban motorway with grade separated junctions has sharply and arbitrarily divided the centre from the remainder of the city". In a 2009 report commissioned by English Heritage and used as evidence by Coventry City Council in planning city centre development, Gould and Gould recommended that the ring road be "rethought as an encircling boulevard, not an urban motorway and the connections to it from both the centre and outside made negotiable and attractive". In a 2015 book, the same authors commented on the pedestrian subways linking areas outside the road with the city centre, writing that they necessitated "tortuous and uncomfortable detours", as well as the impact of the road's construction on green space in the city centre, with Greyfriars Green reduced in size and Lady Herbert's Garden "crammed up against Swanswell Ringway". A 2006 survey by the Coventry Telegraph found that many city residents regarded the subways as unsafe, and took lengthy detours or crossed the ring road directly to avoid using them. The Friargate redevelopment at junction 6 and the 2020s remodelling of junction 7 are eliminating some of these subways in favour of direct pedestrian routes.
As one of the few British cities to see its ring road project pushed to completion, Coventry has received considerable attention as a source of research for post-war architecture, as well as from road enthusiasts. The road has a reputation for being difficult to navigate, particularly for drivers from outside the city, as a result of its nine closely spaced junctions and complex lane layout. BBC News, in a 2014 article titled "Are these the worst ring roads in England?" included Coventry on its list, citing these driver difficulties, along with the view that the road creates a physical barrier isolating the city centre from its suburbs. In a follow-up article, the BBC revealed that they had received many letters from readers agreeing with this negative view of the road, but that numerous other respondents had praised the road, citing its design and the speed with which the city can be navigated by using it. The piece concluded that "you either love it or you hate it". Journalist Christopher Beanland, writing in the Guardian, likened driving on the road to riding a roller coaster.
In 2015, a group of nine writers and nine film-makers, led by Coventry artist Adam Steiner, created a series of poetry films about the ring road. Titled Disappear Here, the project was funded with grants from Arts Council England and Coventry City Council and was used as part of Coventry's successful bid for the status of UK City of Culture 2021. In interviews with the BBC and the Guardian, Steiner commented that "it is the duty of artists and citizens to engage with issues of public space, control of architecture and the human experience of our built environment" and cited the ring road as having a "great presence, not dissimilar to the old city walls". He also said that driving on the road was reminiscent of a driving a Scalextric toy car.
## Junctions
|
30,830,649 |
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Moscow)
| 1,156,622,742 |
Neo-Gothic Catholic cathedral in Moscow
|
[
"20th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Russia",
"Cathedrals in Moscow",
"Cultural heritage monuments of federal significance in Moscow",
"Gothic Revival church buildings in Russia",
"Roman Catholic cathedrals in Russia",
"Roman Catholic churches completed in 1911"
] |
The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Virgin Mary is a neo-Gothic Catholic Church at Moscow's center, that serves as the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Moscow. Located in the Central Administrative Okrug, it is one of three Catholic churches in Moscow and the largest in Russia.
The construction of the cathedral was approved in 1894 by the Ministry of Internal Affairs under Russian Empire. Groundbreaking was in 1899; construction work began in 1901 and was completed ten years later. Three-aisled and built from red brick, the cathedral is based on a design by architect Tomasz Bohdanowicz-Dworzecki. The style was influenced by Westminster Abbey and Milan Cathedral. With the help of funds from Catholic parishes in Russia and its neighbouring states, the church was consecrated as a chapel for Moscow's Polish parish in 1911. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Provisional Government was overthrown by the Bolsheviks and Russia eventually became part of the Soviet Union in 1922. Because the promotion of state atheism was a part of Marxist–Leninist ideology, the government ordered many churches closed; the cathedral was closed in 1938. During World War II, it was threatened with demolition, and was used after the war for civil purposes, as a warehouse and then a hostel. Following the fall of communism in 1991, it returned to being a church in 1996. In 2002 it was elevated to the status of cathedral. Following an extensive and costly programme of reconstruction and refurbishment, the cathedral was reconsecrated in 2005.
In the 21st century, after 58 years of non-religious use, the cathedral is once again the setting for regular liturgical celebrations in multiple languages—Russian, Polish, Korean, English, French, Spanish, Armenian and Latin—as well as benefit concerts featuring organ and church music. Its organ, the third since the cathedral's construction, was donated by the Basel Münster. The cathedral is listed as a heritage building in the Russian Federation, and is a protected monument.
## History
### First construction period
At the end of the 19th century, only two Catholic churches existed in Moscow: the Saint Louis des Français church for the French population and the St. Peter and Paul church for the Polish parishioners. As the congregation for the Polish church had increased to around 30,000 members, the existing buildings were too small. Following the submission of a petition to the Governor-General of Moscow, the local council voted for a new church in 1894. Construction of a new church was permitted with several conditions, including two pertinent to the building site: the structure was to be built away from the old city centre, and was not to be located in the vicinity of any Orthodox sacred sites.
Bearing in mind the council's requirements, on 16 May 1895 the parish purchased a 10 hectare (22 acre) site on Malaya Gruzinskaya Street, then located on the city outskirts and surrounded by fields and vegetable gardens. Today, the site is in the Central Administrative Okrug, outside of the Garden Ring road defining the old walled city, just beyond the Moscow Metro's Koltsevaya Line, and is surrounded by 20th century urban development. The purchase of the land was funded by donations, and cost 10,000 rubles in gold (roughly US\$ as of 2012). The purchase agreement and a full list of donations are today kept in the city archives of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
A further condition imposed by the city read as follows: "In the light of the two existing Roman Catholic churches, the future church shall be larger, with a cross on the gable, but without spires and exterior sculpture". The plans for the building were produced by a Russian architect of Polish descent, Tomasz Bohdanowicz-Dworzecki. Although his plan did not follow the council's latter condition, it was accepted. The plan provided seating for up to 5,000 worshippers. Groundbreaking was in 1899, and construction took place from 1901 to 1911. The construction cost was 290,000 roubles in gold (roughly US\$ as of 2012), much of which was donated by members of the Polish parish of Moscow. More funding came from Catholic parishes throughout Russia, Poland and Byelorussia.
The church was consecrated on 21 December 1911 as the "Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Virgin Mary". It soon obtained the status of a chapel in the Peter and Paul parish. The consecration received extensive coverage in the Russian and Polish press. The Moscow newspaper Russkoye Slovo wrote:
> In the filthy, wretched Malaya Gruzinskaya (Little Georgian) Street, forsaken by God and the city, there rose the wonderful, highly artistic solidity of the new Roman Catholic church, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception of Holy Virgin Mary. Tremendous in magnitude and height, ... with a plenty of conning turrets and towers with crosses. The new cathedral makes a deep impression ... [Every detail] looks impressive and eminent: Not the slightest stylistic flaw could be seen or detected.
From 1911 to 1917, money was collected for interior furnishings, which were relatively sparse apart from the impressive main altar. (These original furnishings remained until the 1930s.) Parts of the draft plan were abandoned: the floor was not constructed from marble as intended, but poured from plain concrete; outside there were no pinnacles on the façade. Writings vary on when the pinnacles were built: some claim they were built in 1923, but others argue that they were not completed until the renovation of the cathedral in 1999. Observers that argue for an earlier construction date state that they were damaged during World War II and left dismantled for some time.
### Closure and conversions
In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Provisional Government was overthrown by the Bolsheviks, and Russia became part of the new Soviet Union. As the promotion of state atheism was a part of Marxist–Leninist ideology, the Soviet government ordered many churches closed. The Peter and Paul parish was formally dissolved by the communist government in 1929, and celebrating Mass was forbidden. The church lost much of its surrounding gardens in 1935—a school was built there the following year—and the church was finally closed on 30 July 1938 (the St. Peter and Paul church had met the same fate nine days earlier). The church was plundered after its closure, and many items, including the main altar and the organ, were lost. The church was used for several months as a vegetable store, and was then reconstructed as a hostel and its interior divided into four floors.
The main tower's spire was removed during the Battle of Moscow to prevent the Luftwaffe from using it as a landmark. Shortly after the war ended in 1945, sections of the gardens were annexed for the building of an apartment block. A fire in 1956 caused the collapse of the lantern over the principal tower's dome. Existing tenants were slowly rehoused, and members of the Mosspetspromproyekt (Russian: Мосспецпромпроект) research institute took possession of the former church. The research institute dealt primarily with project drawings for industrial facilities, but also designed the Olympic cauldron used at Lenin Stadium for the 1980 Summer Games.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the building's exterior became increasingly dilapidated; among those concerned about the church's deterioration was Russian bard Vladimir Vysotsky, who lived in a house across the street. In the late 1970s the city considered renovating the building, possibly to use as a concert hall for organ recitals, or as a general cultural administration centre. These projects were never carried out due to resistance from the research institute.
### Return to religious use
The glasnost (openness) policy, introduced during the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev, played a major role in developing religious freedom in the Soviet Union. Consequently, in 1989, a group of Moscow Catholics and the cultural association "The Polish House" (Russian: Дом Польский), suggested that the building should again be used for religious purposes. Following the city's assent, the first Mass at the site in 60 years was celebrated on the church stairs during the feast of the Immaculate Conception on 8 December 1990. The Mass was celebrated by the Polish priest Tadeusz Pikus, who later became an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Warsaw.
In January 1990, a group of Catholics in Moscow formally founded the parish of the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Virgin Mary. On 13 April 1991 Pope John Paul II promulgated the encyclical Providi quae establishing the "Apostolic administration for European Russia". Its apostolic administrator, Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, issued a decree for the reconstruction of the church on 21 April 1991. With the city's permission, on the Polish National Day (3 May) a second Mass was held, again on the stairs. The constitution of the parish was officially acknowledged on 31 May by the department of justice of the city council. Meanwhile, parts of the church were subleased by Mosspetspromproyekt to various companies.
From 7 June 1991, Masses were celebrated each Sunday in the churchyard—the institute still occupied the building. On 15 July 1991, Father Josef Sanewski, a member of the Salesians of Don Bosco, was appointed the new parish priest. Religious education had been given regularly under the direction of the Salesian Sisters since 29 November 1991. At the same time, the first charities were founded for nursing and aid to the poor. The vice-mayor of Moscow, Yury Luzhkov, signed a decree in favour of the Church on 1 February 1992 ordering the institute to vacate the property by 1994. Parish members entered the building on 2 July 1992, and occupied the institute's workshop. Moscow City Council agreed to allow the church to occupy the space, which was subsequently walled off from the remainder of the building. There, in the former workshop, Mass was celebrated regularly.
The dividing wall was removed by parish members on 7 March 1995, while others started clearing the truss. The institute called the police, OMON, for help. The following day, more conflict with the police occurred and several parish members, among them a nun, were injured. Others were arrested, including a priest and a seminarian, but were released the next day. After these events, the Apostolic Administrator, Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, wrote an open letter to the Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, on 9 March 1995, requesting his intervention: "It seems that persecution of the church was history. Is that the case? I can't remember seeing a priest arrested, and I can't remember seeing a nun beaten up."
As a result, Senior Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, a Yeltsin appointee, signed a decision for the removal of the institute. The decision, dated 7 March 1995, ordered the institute's departure by 1996. Simultaneously, the institute wrote to Luzhkov describing the earlier events from their perspective, and requested compensation for loss of the building. In a meeting with the Polish Ambassador, Stanisław Ciosek, on 15 March 1995, the acting mayor of Moscow, Alexander Musykantski, assured him that the return of the church would be complete by the end of the year.
On 19 March 1995, a Mass was celebrated in the reclaimed part of the church under the direction of Papal Nuncio John Bukovsky, who delivered Pope John Paul II's blessing to the parish. In a new decision dated 2 November 1995, Luzhkov ordered Mosspetspromproyekt to leave the building by the end of the year at the latest. When the order was still not implemented, parish members entered the institute on 2 January 1996 and began the removal. Institute director Evgeny Afanasyev called the police once again, but on this occasion, they declined to intervene. Subsequently, the institute director asked the parish priest for a final extension of the removal date by two weeks—Mosspetspromproyekt vacated the building on 13 January 1996. On 2 February 1996, the Archdiocese of Mother of God at Moscow obtained official permission to use the church indefinitely.
### Restoration and reconsecration
In the early 1990s, plans were made by the Office for Monument Protection to restore the church by 1997, the 850th anniversary of Moscow's foundation. This proposal was not implemented because of the dispute over occupancy. However, in 1995, the city determined that the parish would be responsible for restoration costs. A commission was founded for the planned restoration, chaired by parish priest Josef Sanevski, Russian historian Stanislav Durnin, and Polish building contractor and politician Grzegorz Tuderek.
From 1996 to 1999, the church was restored with the help of sponsors EnergoPol, a Polish company, and Renovabis, a German association for Catholic churches. The Russian government provided funds towards the conclusion of the project. Reconstruction took place initially under the direction of Polish companies PKZ and Budimex, who completely restored the façade and roof. From September 1998, Father Andrzey Stetskevich and Jan Tajchman, architect and restorer from Toruń, Poland, jointly oversaw the work; they had previously headed the restoration of the Catholic Assumption Cathedral in St. Petersburg. (Stetskevich later rose to become vicar general of the Catholic Archdiocese of Moscow.) The interior fittings and the new altar were built by Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian experts. Companies in Moscow carried out all the internal and external marble work. The church furnishings were produced, under the direction of Vladimir Mukhin, by students from the St. Petersburg renovating school. Stained glass for the façade's rose window were made in Toruń, other windows were produced by Tolotschko, a Belarusian company from Hrodna. The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was ceremonially reopened on 12 December 1999 and was reconsecrated by the Cardinal Secretary of State of the Roman Curia, Angelo Sodano. The cathedral incorporates a library, the editorial office of the Russian Catholic magazine The Catholic Messenger—The Light of the Gospel (Russian: Католический вестник — Свет Евангелия) as well as the local office for the Caritas charity.
## Architecture and facilities
The cathedral, built in a neo-Gothic style, is a cruciform pseudo-basilica with three naves and an apse. It was constructed entirely from red brick, and was not rendered externally. The five-bay main aisle extends for 65 metres (213 ft), each with lateral arms 13 metres (43 ft) long. The octagonal lantern tower above the crossing is 30 metres (98 ft) high. The façade is based on the design of Westminster Abbey, and the tower loosely on that of Milan Cathedral. Typically for old-style church buildings, each side aisle is strengthened by five buttresses, the ten together symbolising the Ten Commandments. Crosses were erected, as part of the renovation, surmounting each principal tower; the central façade pinnacle and two other façade pinnacles feature the crests of John Paul II and archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz.
The first ten steps to the portal symbolise the Commandments, the eleventh symbolises Jesus Christ. The portal symbolises Heaven's gate, reached by obeying the Commandments and the teachings of Jesus. The portal is surrounded by columns and crowned by a wimperg, the gable spire of which is formed as a finial. The wimperg is decorated with a relief ornament, in the centre of which is a golden monogram "VMIC" (Virgo Maria Immaculata Concepta, Latin for "Virgin Mary, conceived unblemished"). The original architectural design provided a Star of David instead of the monogram, a reference to the Jewish faith of the Virgin Mary. Above the wimperg is a 3-metre (9.8 ft) tall rose window, built from a light-coloured, translucent stone.
### Interior
On each side on the entry of the cathedral is a stone crucifix and a holy water font. High on the left side there is a brick from the Lateran Basilica, and on the right side a jubilee 2000 medal. The crypt is accessed through the door in the right wall of the vestibule, then up to the organ matroneum and finally down through the door on the left wall. In the crypt, there is an oratory, as well as Catechism rooms and the office of the Caritas charity.
There are benches in the main aisle and confessionals in the side aisles. The confessionals contained benches until the closure of the church in 1938. After its reconstruction, the left side was reserved for women, and the right for men. Both side aisles are separated from the main aisle by pillar files, consisting of four columns and two half columns. The columns and the roof are painted in white, and the walls in cream. The floor is constructed from light and dark grey marble slabs in a chequered pattern.
Most of the 8.5-metre (28 ft) high stained glass windows have abstract designs. Those in front feature crests of Apostolic Nuncios John Cardinal Burkowski and Francesco Cardinal Colasuonno. The windows in the transept are slightly larger and have a more complex design. The window in the right lateral arm depicts Saint Peter and Saint Andrew, who symbolise the Western and Eastern branches of the Catholic Church. On the window on the opposite side of the left lateral arm is depicted Pope John Paul II, who is gazing at the Marian apparition of Fátima. In the nave, under the windows, are fourteen reliefs depicting the Stations of the Cross.
The entry to the vestry is located at the end of the right side aisle next to the choir; at the end of the left side aisle is the Chapel for Mercy of God. The tabernacle is situated on the chapel's altar. The church's main altar is faced with a dark green marble, and houses relics of Saints Andrew, Zenon of Verona, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, Cosmas, Damian and Anastasia, as well as the Virgin Mary's scarf and a donation from the Diocese of Verona. The ambo—a projection coming out from the soleas—is on the right side of the altar, and is faced with the same marble. Behind the altar, on the wall of the apse, there is a nine-metre high stone crucifix with a three-metre high figure of Christ. Plaster figures depicting the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist by architect Svyatoslav Sakhlebin are located on the left and the right sides (respectively) of the corbels. On the opposite side of the altar and above the cathedral's vestibule is the organ loft, which had originally room for 50 choristers; a large part of it is now occupied by the organ.
### Organ and bells
The present pipe organ is one of the largest in Russia and the third since the church's foundation. The first organ was taken by the state in 1938 and the second, an electronic organ with 60 stops, was installed as part of the renovations in 1999. It was donated by the American charity "Aid to the Church in Russia", headed by priest Marcel Guarnizo, who received consecration as a deacon during the renovation in 1997. The electronic organ was replaced by a pipe organ during 2002–2005.
The cathedral's pipe organ was built in 1955 by Orgelbau Kuhn AG of Männedorf, Switzerland, for the Reformed Evangelical Basel Münster Cathedral in Basel, Switzerland. The Swiss cathedral donated the organ, dismantled it in 2002, and all pipes but without the largest—Nr. 65 principal bass 32', 10 m (32 ft) long—were transferred to Moscow. The pipes were transported wrapped in new garments donated by the people of Basel, which were later distributed to Moscow's poor. The installation of the pipe organ in Moscow was performed by the Orgelbau Schmid company from Kaufbeuren, Germany, headed by Gerhard Schmid, who refused payment for his work. During the work, Schmid was killed in a fall from a scaffold on 9 September 2004; his son Gunnar finished the work.
The original 10-metre, 32' pipe stayed in Switzerland and was built into a new organ in the Münster Cathedral, which belongs to the Swiss Inventory of Cultural Property of National and Regional Significance. This pipe, capable of reproducing a tone of 16.35 Hz, the bass note C<sub>0</sub> four octaves below middle C, was recreated in Moscow and added to the cathedral's organ in 2009.
The five church bells are located on the cathedral's roof behind a tripartite screen of lancet arches on the left side of the façade. They were poured by the Felczyński bell foundry in Przemyśl, Poland and donated by bishop Wiktor Skworc The bells are electronically activated. The largest weighs 900 kilograms (2,000 lb) and bears the name "Our Lady of Fátima". The other bells are named, from the smallest to the largest: "John Paul II"; "St. Jude", named after the patron saint of archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz; "Anniversary-2000"; and "St. Victor", named after the patron saint of Bishop Wiktor Skworc.
## 21st century
On 11 February 2002, Pope John Paul II created the administration for the Catholic Archdiocese of Moscow and named Apostolic Administrator Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz as archbishop and metropolitan. This decision was criticised by Patriarch Alexy II, who called it "unfriendly", as he believed the Catholic Church saw Russia as a field for missionary activity. At the same time, the Church of the Immaculate Conception acquired the status of cathedral of the archdiocese. In March 2002, members of the cathedral and Catholics from other European cities participated in a rosary led by the Pope via video conference. Since the reopening, many services take place daily in the cathedral. The main liturgical language for Masses is Russian, but services are also held in Polish, English, French, Spanish, Korean, Ecclesiastical Latin (Tridentine Mass) and Classical Armenian (the liturgical language of the Armenian Catholic Church and it's Ordinariate for Catholics of Armenian Rite in Eastern Europe).
The re-installed organ—with 74 stops, 4 manuals and 5,563 pipes—was consecrated by Archbishop Kondrusiewicz on 16 January 2005. The mass was followed by the opening concert for the First International Festival for Organ Music. The month-long festival saw several organ concerts in the cathedral. The closing concert was performed by chief organist James Edward Goettsche from St. Peter's Basilica. Organ and church music concerts take place regularly in the cathedral; entry is normally free, except for selected concerts, for which admission is by ticket. A service in remembrance of those killed in the 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash was held on 12 April 2010.
In the fall of 2016, New York City-based Clarion Choir and its director, Stephen Fox, gave composer Maximilian Steinberg's long banned Christian choral concerto Passion Week its Russian premiere, with performances at Immaculate Conception Cathedral and at Rachmaninov Hall at the Conservatory in Moscow and in St. Petersburg.
## See also
- List of churches in Moscow
- Russian Byzantine Catholic Church
- St. Andrew's Anglican Church, Moscow
|
155,816 |
William de Corbeil
| 1,143,543,011 |
12th-century Norman monk and Archbishop of Canterbury
|
[
"1070s births",
"1136 deaths",
"12th-century English Roman Catholic archbishops",
"Archbishops of Canterbury",
"Augustinian canons",
"Burials at Canterbury Cathedral",
"Year of birth uncertain"
] |
William de Corbeil or William of Corbeil (c. 1070 – 21 November 1136) was a medieval Archbishop of Canterbury. Very little is known of William's early life or his family, except that he was born at Corbeil, south of Paris, and that he had two brothers. Educated as a theologian, he taught briefly before serving the bishops of Durham and London as a clerk and subsequently becoming an Augustinian canon. William was elected to the See of Canterbury as a compromise candidate in 1123, the first canon to become an English archbishop. He succeeded Ralph d'Escures who had employed him as a chaplain.
Throughout his archbishopric, William was embroiled in a dispute with Thurstan, the Archbishop of York, over the primacy of Canterbury. As a temporary solution, Pope Honorius II appointed William the papal legate for England, giving him powers superior to those of York. William concerned himself with the morals of the clergy, and presided over three legatine councils, which among other things condemned the purchase of benefices or priesthoods, and admonished the clergy to live a celibate life. He was also known as a builder; among his constructions is the keep of Rochester Castle. Towards the end of his life William was instrumental in the selection of Count Stephen of Boulogne as King of England, despite his oath to the dying King Henry I that he would support the succession of his daughter, the Empress Matilda. Although some chroniclers considered him a perjurer and a traitor for crowning Stephen, none doubted his piety.
## Early life
William de Corbeil was most likely born at Corbeil on the Seine, possibly in about 1070. He was educated at Laon, where he studied under Anselm of Laon, the noted scholastic and teacher of theology. William taught for a time at Laon, but nothing else is known of his early life. All that is known of his parents or ancestry is that he had two brothers, Ranulf and Helgot; his brothers appear as witnesses on William's charters.
William joined the service of Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, as a clerk, and was present at the translation of the body of Saint Cuthbert in 1104. His name appears high in a list of those who were present at the event, implying that he may have held an important position in Flambard's household, but appended to his name is "subsequently archbishop", suggesting that his inclusion could have been a later interpolation. He was a teacher to Flambard's children, probably in about 1107 to 1109, but at some unknown date William appears to have transferred to the household of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Between 1107 and 1112 he went to Laon and attended lectures given by Anselm of Laon. By 1116 he was a clerk for Ralph d'Escures, Archbishop of Canterbury, with whom he travelled to Rome in 1117 when Ralph was in dispute with Thurstan, the Archbishop of York, over the primacy of Canterbury.
In 1118, William entered the Augustinian order at Holy Trinity Priory in Aldgate, a house of canons rather than monks. Subsequently, he became prior of the Augustinian priory at St Osyth in Essex, appointed by Richard de Beaumis, Bishop of London, in 1121.
## Election as archbishop
After the death of Ralph d'Escures in October 1122, King Henry I allowed a free election, with the new primate to be chosen by the leading men of the realm, both ecclesiastical and secular. The monks of the cathedral chapter and the bishops of the kingdom disagreed on who should be appointed. The bishops insisted that it should not be a clerk (a non-monastic member of the clergy), but Canterbury's monastic cathedral chapter preferred a monk, and insisted that they alone had the right to elect the archbishop. However, only two bishops in England or Normandy were monks (Ernulf, Bishop of Rochester, and Serlo, Bishop of Séez), and no monks other than Anselm of Canterbury, Ernulf, and Ralph d'Escures had been elected to an English or Norman see since 1091; recent precedent therefore favoured a clerk. King Henry sided with the bishops, and told the monks that they could elect their choice from a short list selected by the bishops. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the list contained no monks.
On 2 February or 4 February 1123, William was chosen from among four candidates to the See of Canterbury; the names of the three unsuccessful candidates are unknown. He appears to have been a compromise candidate, as he was at least a canon, if not the monk that the chapter had sought. William was the first Augustinian canon to become an archbishop in England, a striking break with the tradition that had favoured monks in the See of Canterbury. Although most contemporaries would not have considered there to be much of a distinction between monks and canons, William's election still occasioned some trepidation among the monks of the Canterbury chapter, who were "alarmed at the appointment, since he was a clerk".
## Primacy dispute
William, like every other Canterbury archbishop since Lanfranc, maintained that Canterbury held primacy—in essence, overlordship—over all other dioceses in Great Britain, including the archbishopric of York. Thurstan had claimed independence, and refused to consecrate William when the latter demanded recognition of Canterbury's primacy; the ceremony was performed instead by William's own suffragan bishops on 18 February 1123. Previous popes had generally favoured York's side of the dispute, and the successive popes Paschal II, Gelasius II, and Calixtus II had issued rulings in the late 1110s and early 1120s siding with York. Calixtus had also consecrated Thurstan when both King Henry and William's predecessor had attempted to prevent Thurstan's consecration unless Thurstan submitted to Canterbury.
After travelling to Rome to receive his pallium, the symbol of his authority as an archbishop, William discovered that Thurstan had arrived before him, and had presented a case against William's election to Pope Callixtus II. There were four objections to William's election: first that he was elected in the king's court; second that the chapter of Canterbury had been coerced and was unwilling; third that his consecration was unlawful because it was not performed by Thurstan; and fourth that a monk should be elected to the See of Canterbury, which had been founded by Augustine of Canterbury, a monk. However, King Henry I and the Emperor Henry V, Henry I's son-in-law, persuaded the pope to overlook the irregularities of the election, with the proviso that William swore to obey "all things that the Pope imposed upon him". At the conclusion of the visit the pope denied the primacy of Canterbury over York, dismissing the Canterbury cathedral chapter's supposed papal documents as forgeries. The outcome was in accordance with most earlier papal rulings on the primacy issue, which involved not taking sides and thus reinforcing papal supremacy. William returned to England, and was enthroned at Canterbury on 22 July 1123.
The archbishop's next opponent was the papal legate of the new Pope Honorius II, Cardinal John of Crema, who arrived in England in 1125. A compromise between York and Canterbury was negotiated, which involved Canterbury allowing York the supervision of the dioceses of Bangor, Chester, and St Asaph in return for Thurstan's verbal submission and the written submission of his successors. The pope, however, rejected the agreement, likely because he wished to preserve his own primacy, and substituted his own resolution. The papal solution was that Honorius would appoint William papal legate in England and Scotland, which was done in 1126, giving William the position over York, but it was dependent on the will of the pope, and would lapse on the pope's death. The arrangement merely postponed the problem however, as neither Thurstan nor William renounced their claims. That Christmas, at a royal court, Thurstan unsuccessfully attempted to claim the right to ceremonially crown the king as well as have his episcopal cross carried before him in Canterbury's province. As a result of his lengthy dispute with Thurstan, William travelled to Rome more frequently than any bishop before him except for Wilfrid in the 7th century.
## Archiepiscopal activities
Legatine councils in 1125, 1127 and 1129 were held in Westminster, the last two called by Archbishop William. The council of 1125 met under the direction of John of Crema and prohibited simony, purchase of the sacraments, and the inheritance of clerical benefices. John of Crema had been sent to England to seek a compromise in the Canterbury–York dispute, but also to publicise the decrees of the First Council of the Lateran held in 1123, which neither William nor Thurstan had attended. Included in canons were the rejection of hereditary claims to a benefice or prebend, which was a source of consternation to the clergy. Also prohibited was the presence of any women in clergy's households unless they were relatives. In 1127 the council condemned the purchase of benefices, priesthoods, or places in monastic houses. It also enacted canons declaring that clergy who refused to give up their wives or concubines would be deprived of their benefices, and that any such women who did not leave the parish where they had been could be expelled and even forced into slavery. Lastly, in 1129 the clergy were once more admonished to live a celibate life and to put aside their wives. This council was presided over by King Henry, who then undermined the force of the prohibition of concubines by permitting the clergy to pay a fine to the royal treasury to keep their women. William's allowance of this royal fine was condemned by the chronicler Henry of Huntingdon. The festival of the Conception was also allowed at one of these councils.
As well as the councils, William was active in his diocese, and was interested in reforming the churches in his diocese. A conflict with Alexander of Lincoln over a church in Alexander's diocese led to further condemnation by Henry of Huntingdon and prompted Henry to write that "no one can sing [William's] praises because there's nothing to sing about." William seems to have been somewhat eclipsed in ecclesiastical administration and appointments by Roger of Salisbury, Bishop of Salisbury, and King Henry's primary advisor. William reformed the nunnery of Minster-in-Sheppey however, and he installed a college of regular canons at the church of St. Gregory's, in Canterbury. He also secured a profession of obedience from the newly installed abbot of St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury. His legateship from Honorius lapsed when the pope died in February 1130, but it was renewed by Honorius' successor Pope Innocent II in 1132.
During William's last years he attempted to reform St Martin's, Dover. The king had granted the church to the archbishop and the diocese of Canterbury in 1130, and William had a new church building constructed near Dover. The archbishop had planned to install canons regular into the church, and on William's deathbed dispatched a party of canons from Merton Priory to take over St Martin's. However, the party of canons, who had been accompanied by two bishops and some other clergy, were prevented from entering by a monk of Canterbury Cathedral, who claimed that St Martin's belonged to the monks of the cathedral chapter. The canons from Merton did not press the issue in the face of the Canterbury chapter's appeal to Rome, and after William's death, the cathedral chapter sent 12 monks to St Martin's instead.
The construction of the keep of Rochester Castle—at 115 feet (35 m), the tallest Norman-built keep in England—was initiated at William's orders. Built for King Henry, it is still intact, although it no longer has a roof or floors. The work at Rochester was built within the stone curtain walls that Gundulf of Rochester had erected in the late 11th century. The keep was designed for defence and also to provide comfortable living quarters, which were probably intended for use by the archbishops when they visited Rochester. In 1127, the custody of Rochester Castle was granted to William and his successors as archbishop by King Henry, including the right to fortify the place as the archbishops wished, and the right to garrison the castle with their own men. In the view of the historian Judith Green, the grant of the castle was partly to secure the loyalty of the archbishop to the king, and partly to help secure the defences of the Kent coast. William also completed the construction of Canterbury Cathedral, which was dedicated in May 1130.
## Final years
The archbishop swore to Henry I that he would support Henry's daughter Matilda's claim to the English throne, but after Henry's death he instead crowned Stephen, on 22 December 1135. He was persuaded to do so by Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester and Stephen's brother, and Roger of Salisbury, Bishop of Salisbury. The bishops argued that Henry had no right to impose the oath, and that the dying king had released the barons and the bishops from the oath in any event. The royal steward, Hugh Bigod, swore he had been present at the king's deathbed and had heard the king say that he released the oath.
William did not long outlive Henry, dying at Canterbury on 21 November 1136. He was buried in the north transept of Canterbury Cathedral. Contemporaries were grudging in their praise, and William's reputation suffered after the accession of Matilda's son, Henry II, to the English throne. William of Malmesbury said that William was a courteous and sober man, with little of the flamboyant lifestyle of the more "modern" bishops. The author of the Gesta Stephani claimed that William was avaricious and hoarded money. None of the chroniclers doubted his piety, even when they named him a perjurer and a traitor for his coronation of Stephen.
|
19,785,484 |
Robert Hues
| 1,140,340,112 |
English mathematician and geographer (1553–1632)
|
[
"1553 births",
"1632 deaths",
"16th-century English mathematicians",
"17th-century English mathematicians",
"Academics of the University of Oxford",
"Alumni of Brasenose College, Oxford",
"Alumni of St Mary Hall, Oxford",
"Burials at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford",
"English geographers",
"People from Herefordshire"
] |
Robert Hues (1553 – 24 May 1632) was an English mathematician and geographer. He attended St. Mary Hall at Oxford, and graduated in 1578. Hues became interested in geography and mathematics, and studied navigation at a school set up by Walter Raleigh. During a trip to Newfoundland, he made observations which caused him to doubt the accepted published values for variations of the compass. Between 1586 and 1588, Hues travelled with Thomas Cavendish on a circumnavigation of the globe, performing astronomical observations and taking the latitudes of places they visited. Beginning in August 1591, Hues and Cavendish again set out on another circumnavigation of the globe. During the voyage, Hues made astronomical observations in the South Atlantic, and continued his observations of the variation of the compass at various latitudes and at the Equator. Cavendish died on the journey in 1592, and Hues returned to England the following year.
In 1594, Hues published his discoveries in the Latin work Tractatus de globis et eorum usu (Treatise on Globes and Their Use) which was written to explain the use of the terrestrial and celestial globes that had been made and published by Emery Molyneux in late 1592 or early 1593, and to encourage English sailors to use practical astronomical navigation. Hues' work subsequently went into at least 12 other printings in Dutch, English, French and Latin.
Hues continued to have dealings with Raleigh in the 1590s, and later became a servant of Thomas Grey, 15th Baron Grey de Wilton. While Grey was imprisoned in the Tower of London for participating in the Bye Plot, Hues stayed with him. Following Grey's death in 1614, Hues attended upon Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland, when he was confined in the Tower; one source states that Hues, Thomas Harriot and Walter Warner were Northumberland's constant companions and known as his "Three Magi", although this is disputed. Hues tutored Northumberland's son Algernon Percy (who was to become the 10th Earl of Northumberland) at Oxford, and subsequently (in 1622–1623) Algernon's younger brother Henry. In later years, Hues lived in Oxford where he was a fellow of the University, and discussed mathematics and related subjects with like-minded friends. He died on 24 May 1632 in the city and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral.
## Early years and education
Robert Hues was born in 1553 at Little Hereford in Herefordshire, England. In 1571, at the age of 18 years, he entered Brasenose College, University of Oxford. English antiquarian Anthony à Wood (1632–1695) wrote that when Hues arrived at Oxford he was "only a poor scholar or servitor ... he continued for some time a very sober and serious servant ... but being sensible of the loss of time which he sustained there by constant attendance, he transferred himself to St Mary's Hall". Hues graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree on 12 July 1578, having shown marked skill in Greek. He later gave advice to the dramatist and poet George Chapman for his 1616 English translation of Homer, and Chapman referred to him as his "learned and valuable friend". According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, there is unsubstantiated evidence that after completing his degree Hues was held in the Tower of London, though no reason is given for this, then went abroad after his release. It is possible he travelled to Continental Europe.
Hues was a friend of the geographer Richard Hakluyt, who was then regent master of Christ Church. In the 1580s, Hakluyt introduced him to Walter Raleigh and explorers and navigators whom Raleigh knew. In addition, it is likely that Hues came to know astronomer and mathematician Thomas Harriot and Walter Warner at Thomas Allen's lectures in mathematics. The four men were later associated with Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland, who was known as the "Wizard Earl" for his interest in scientific and alchemical experiments and his library.
## Career
Hues became interested in geography and mathematics – an undated source indicates that he disputed accepted values of variations of the compass after making observations off the Newfoundland coast. He either went there on a fishing trip, or may have joined a 1585 voyage to Virginia arranged by Raleigh and led by Richard Grenville, which passed Newfoundland on the return journey to England. Hues perhaps become acquainted with the sailor Thomas Cavendish at this time, as both of them were taught by Harriot at Raleigh's school of navigation. An anonymous 17th-century manuscript states that Hues circumnavigated the world with Cavendish between 1586 and 1588 "purposely for taking the true Latitude of places"; he may have been the "NH" who wrote a brief account of the voyage that was published by Hakluyt in his 1589 work The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation. In the year that book appeared, Hues was with Edward Wright on the Earl of Cumberland's raiding expedition to the Azores to capture Spanish galleons.
Beginning in August 1591, Hues joined Cavendish on another attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Sailing on the Leicester, they were accompanied by the explorer John Davis on the Desire. Cavendish and Davis agreed that they would part company once they had cleared the Strait of Magellan between Chile and Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, as Davis intended to sail to America to search for the Northwest Passage. The expedition was ultimately unsuccessful, although Davis did discover the Falkland Islands. In the meantime, delayed in small harbours in the Strait with crew members dying from the cold, illness and starvation, Cavendish turned back eastwards to return to England. He was plagued by mutinous crewmen, and also by natives and Portuguese who attacked his sailors seeking food and water on shore. Increasingly depressed, Cavendish died in 1592 somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, possibly a suicide.
During the voyage, Hues made astronomical observations of the Southern Cross and other stars of the Southern Hemisphere while in the South Atlantic, and also observed the variation of the compass there and at the Equator. He returned to England after Cavendish died, and published his discoveries in the work Tractatus de globis et eorum usu (Treatise on Globes and Their Use, 1594), which he dedicated to Raleigh. The book was written to explain the use of the terrestrial and celestial globes that had been made and published by Emery Molyneux in late 1592 or early 1593. Apparently, the book was also intended to encourage English sailors to use practical astronomical navigation, although Lesley Cormack has observed that the fact it was written in Latin suggests that it was aimed at scholarly readers on the Continent. In 1595, William Sanderson, a London merchant who had largely financed the globes' construction, presented a small globe together with Hues' "Latin booke that teacheth the use of my great globes" to Robert Cecil, a statesman who was spymaster and minister to Elizabeth I and James I. Hues' work subsequently went into at least 12 other printings in Dutch (1597, 1613 and 1622), English (1638 and 1659), French (1618) and Latin (1611, 1613, 1617, 1627, 1659 and 1663). In his book An Accidence or The Path-way to Experience: Necessary for all Young Sea-men (1626), John Smith, who founded the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown, Virginia, listed Hues' book among the works that a young seaman should study.
Tractatus de globis begins with a letter by Hues dedicated to Raleigh that recalled geographical discoveries made by Englishmen during Elizabeth I's reign. However, he felt that his countrymen would have surpassed the Spaniards and Portuguese if they had a complete knowledge of astronomy and geometry, which were essential to successful navigation. In the preface of the book, Hues rehearsed arguments that proved the earth is a sphere, and refuted opposing theories. The treatise was divided into five parts. The first part described elements common to Molyneux's terrestrial and celestial globes, including the circles and lines inscribed on them, zones and climates, and the use of each globe's wooden horizon circle and brass meridian. The second part described planets, fixed stars and constellations; while the third part described the lands and seas shown on the terrestrial globe, and discussed the length of the circumference of the earth and of a degree of a great circle. Part 4, which Hues considered the most important part of the work, explained how the globes enabled seamen to determine the sun's position, latitude, course and distance, amplitudes and azimuths, and time and declination. The final part of the work contained a treatise inspired by Harriot on rhumb lines. In the work, Hues also published for the first time the six fundamental navigational propositions involved in solving what was later termed the "nautical triangle" used for plane sailing. Difference of latitude and departure (or longitude) are two sides of the triangle forming a right angle, the distance travelled is the hypotenuse, and the angle between difference of latitude and distance is the course. If any two elements are known, the other two can be determined by plotting or calculation using tables of sines, tangents and secants.
In the 1590s, Hues continued to have dealings with Raleigh – he was one of the executors of Raleigh's will – and he may have been the "Hewes" who dined with Northumberland regularly in 1591. He later became a servant of Thomas Grey, the 15th and last Baron Grey de Wilton (1575–1614). For participating in the Bye Plot, a conspiracy by Roman Catholic priest William Watson to kidnap James I and force him to repeal anti-Catholic legislation, Grey was attainted and forfeited his title in 1603. The following year, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Grey was given consent for Hues to stay in the Tower with him. Between 1605 and 1621, Northumberland was also confined in the Tower; he was suspected of involvement in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 because his relative Thomas Percy was among the conspirators.
In 1616, following Grey's death, Hues began to be "attendant upon th'aforesaid Earle of Northumberland for matters of learning", and was paid a yearly sum of £40 to support his research until Northumberland's death in 1632. Wood stated that Harriot, Hues and Warner were Northumberland's "constant companions, and were usually called the Earl of Northumberland's Three Magi. They had a table at the Earl's charge, and the Earl himself did constantly converse with them, and with Sir Walter Raleigh, then in the Tower". Together with the scientist Nathanael Toporley and the mathematician Thomas Allen, the men kept abreast of developments in astronomy, mathematics, physiology and the physical sciences, and made important contributions in these areas. According to the letter writer John Chamberlain, Northumberland refused a pardon offered to him in 1617, preferring to remain with Harriot, Hues and Warner. However, the fact that these companions of Northumberland were his "Three Magi" studying with him in the Tower of London has been regarded as a romanticisation by the antiquarian John Aubrey and disputed for lack of evidence. Hues was tutor to Northumberland's sons: first Algernon Percy, who subsequently became the 10th Earl of Northumberland, at Oxford where he matriculated at Christ Church in 1617; and later Algernon's younger brother Henry in 1622–1623. Hues lived at Christ Church at this time, but may have occasionally attended upon Northumberland at Petworth House in Petworth, West Sussex, and at Syon House in London after the latter's release from the Tower in 1622. Hues sometimes met Walter Warner in London, and they are known to have discussed the reflection of bodies.
## Later life
In later years, Hues lived in Oxford where he discussed mathematics and allied subjects with like-minded friends. Cormack states he was a fellow at the University. Under the terms of the will of Thomas Harriot, who died on 2 July 1621, Hues and Warner were given the responsibility of helping Harriot's executor Nathaniel Torporley to prepare Harriot's mathematical papers for publication. Hues was also required to help price Harriot's books and other possessions for sale to the Bodleian Library.
Hues, who did not marry, died on 24 May 1632 in Stone House, St. Aldate's (opposite the Blue Boar in central Oxford). This was the house of John Smith, M.A., the son of a cook at Christ Church named J. Smith. In his will, Hues made many small bequests to his friends, including a sum of £20 to his "kinswoman" Mary Holly (of whom nothing is known), and 20 nobles to each of her three sisters. He was buried in Christ Church Cathedral, and a monumental brass to him was placed in Christ Church with the following inscription:
> Depositum viri literatissimi, morum ac religionis integerrimi, Roberti Husia, ob eruditionem omnigenem [sic: omnigenam?], Theologicam tum Historicam, tum Scholasticam, Philologicam, Philosophiam, præsertim vero Mathematicam (cujus insigne monumentum in typis reliquit) Primum Thomæ Candishio conjunctissimi, cujus in consortio, explorabundis [sic: explorabundus?] velis ambivit orbem: deinde Domino Baroni Gray; cui solator accessit in arca Londinensi. Quo defuncto, ad studia henrici Comitis Northumbriensis ibidem vocatus est, cujus filio instruendo cum aliquot annorum operam in hac Ecclesia dedisset et Academiae confinium locum valetudinariae senectuti commodum censuisset; in ædibus Johannis Smith, corpore exhaustus, sed animo vividus, expiravit die Maii 24, anno reparatae salutis 1632, aetatis suæ 79.
>
> [Here lies a highly lettered man, of the highest moral and religious integrity, Robert Hues, on account of his erudition in all subjects, both Theology and History, and Rhetoric, Philology, and Philosophy, but especially Mathematics (of which a notable volume [i.e., his book] remains in print). He was most closely associated with Thomas Cavendish, in whose company he explored the world by sail; then with Lord Baron Gray, for whom he came as consoler in the Tower of London. When Gray died, he was summoned to study in the same place with Henry Earl of Northumberland, to teach his son, and when he had worked for some years in this Church [i.e., Christ Church Cathedral], and had decided that the place next to the School [i.e., Christ Church, Oxford] was suitable for his health in his old age, he breathed his last at the house of John Smith, his body exhausted, but with a lively spirit, on 24 May, in the year of our salvation 1632, at the age of 79.]
## Works
- (in Latin), octavo. The following reprints are referred to by Clements Markham in his introduction to the Hakluyt Society's 1889 reprint of the English version of Tractatus de globis at pp. xxxviii–xl:
- 2nd printing: (in Dutch), quarto.
- 3rd printing: (in Latin), octavo. A reprint of the first edition of 1594.
- 4th printing: (in Dutch), quarto.
- 5th printing: (in Latin). Contains the Index Geographicus. DeGolyer Collection in the History of Science and Technology (now History of Science Collections), University of Oklahoma.
- 6th printing: (in Latin), quarto.
- 7th printing: (in French), octavo.
- 8th printing: (in Dutch), quarto.
- 9th printing: (in Latin), duodecimo.
- 10th printing: .
- 11th printing: A Latin version by Jodocus Hondius and John Isaac Pontanus appeared in London in 1659. Octavo.
- 12th printing: , octavo. Collection of Yale University Library.
- 13th printing: (in Latin).
The Hakluyt Society's reprint of the English version was itself published as:
\*.
The following works also are, or appear to be, versions of Tractatus de globis et eorum usu, though they are not mentioned by Markham:
- .
- (in Latin).
- .
- .
- . Collection of the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal.
- , two pts. Collection of the Bodleian Library.
|
287,341 |
Billy Martin
| 1,169,838,516 |
American baseball player and manager (1928–1989)
|
[
"1928 births",
"1989 deaths",
"American League All-Stars",
"American people of Azorean descent",
"American people of Italian descent",
"Baseball coaches from California",
"Baseball players from Berkeley, California",
"Berkeley High School (Berkeley, California) alumni",
"Burials at Gate of Heaven Cemetery (Hawthorne, New York)",
"Cincinnati Reds players",
"Cleveland Indians players",
"Detroit Tigers managers",
"Detroit Tigers players",
"Kansas City Athletics players",
"Major League Baseball broadcasters",
"Major League Baseball general managers",
"Major League Baseball managers with retired numbers",
"Major League Baseball players with retired numbers",
"Major League Baseball second basemen",
"Major League Baseball third base coaches",
"Milwaukee Braves players",
"Minnesota Twins coaches",
"Minnesota Twins managers",
"Minnesota Twins players",
"Minnesota Twins scouts",
"New York Yankees announcers",
"New York Yankees managers",
"New York Yankees players",
"Oakland Athletics executives",
"Oakland Athletics managers",
"People from Broome County, New York",
"Road incident deaths in New York (state)",
"Texas Rangers managers",
"United States Army soldiers",
"World Series-winning managers"
] |
Alfred Manuel Martin Jr. (May 16, 1928 – December 25, 1989), commonly called "Billy", was an American Major League Baseball second baseman and manager who, in addition to leading other teams, was five times the manager of the New York Yankees. First known as a scrappy infielder who made considerable contributions to the championship Yankee teams of the 1950s, he then built a reputation as a manager who would initially make bad teams good, before ultimately being fired amid dysfunction. In each of his stints with the Yankees he managed them to winning records before being fired by team owner George Steinbrenner or resigning under fire, usually amid a well-publicized scandal such as Martin's involvement in an alcohol-fueled fight.
Martin was born in a working-class section of Berkeley, California. His skill as a baseball player gave him a route out of his home town. Signed by the Pacific Coast League Oakland Oaks, Martin learned much from Casey Stengel, the man who would manage him both in Oakland and in New York, and enjoyed a close relationship with Stengel. Martin's spectacular catch of a wind-blown Jackie Robinson popup late in Game Seven of the 1952 World Series saved that series for the Yankees, and he was the hitting star of the 1953 World Series, earning the Most Valuable Player award in the Yankee victory. He missed most of two seasons, 1954 and 1955, after being drafted into the Army, and his abilities never fully returned; the Yankees traded him after a brawl at the Copacabana club in New York during the 1957 season. Martin bitterly resented being traded, and did not speak to Stengel for years, a time during which Martin completed his playing career with various teams.
The last team for whom Martin played, the Minnesota Twins, gave him a job as a scout, and he spent most of the 1960s with them, becoming a coach in 1965. After a successful managerial debut with the Twins' top minor league affiliate, the Denver Bears, Martin was made the Twins' manager in 1969. He led the club to the American League West title, but was fired after the season. He then was hired by a declining Detroit Tigers franchise in 1971, and led that team to an American League East title in 1972 before being fired by the Tigers late in the 1973 season. He was quickly hired by the Texas Rangers, and he turned them for a season (1974) into a winning team, but was fired amid conflict with ownership in 1975. He was almost immediately hired by the Yankees.
As Yankee manager, Martin led the team to consecutive American League pennants in 1976 and 1977; the Yankees were swept in the 1976 World Series by the Cincinnati Reds but triumphed over the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games in the 1977 World Series. The 1977 season saw season-long conflict between Martin and Steinbrenner, as well as between the manager and Yankee slugger Reggie Jackson, including a near brawl between the two in the dugout on national television; but the season culminated in Martin's only world championship as a manager. He was forced to resign midway through the 1978 season after saying of Jackson and Steinbrenner, "one's a born liar, and the other's convicted"; less than a week later, the news that he would return as manager in a future season was announced to a huge ovation from the Yankee Stadium crowd. He returned in 1979, but was fired at season's end by Steinbrenner.
From 1980 to 1982, he managed the Oakland Athletics, earning a division title with an aggressive style of play known as "Billyball" that led them to the ALCS in 1981, but he was fired after the 1982 season. He was rehired by the Yankees, whom he managed three more times, each for a season or less, and each ending in his firing by Steinbrenner. Martin died in an automobile accident in upstate New York on Christmas night in 1989. He is fondly remembered by many Yankee fans.
## Early life
Alfred Manuel Martin Jr. was born on May 16, 1928, in Berkeley, California. He was given his father's name; the elder Martin, usually nicknamed Al, was a truck driver for the city of Berkeley. Al Martin had been born in Kauai, Hawaii, the son of Portuguese immigrants, and had moved to Oakland. Billy Martin's mother's birth name was Juvan Salvini, but she went by the first name Jenny for most of her life. The daughter of Italian immigrants who had lived in San Francisco, but who moved across the Bay about the time of the 1906 earthquake, she also changed her last name, first when she married Donato Pisani around 1918, by whom she had a son, Frank, nicknamed Tudo, before the marriage broke up (Jenny later claimed that Donato had been unfaithful). There is some doubt that Jenny and Al ever married, but they lived together as a wedded couple for a time, during which Billy Martin was born at his maternal grandmother's house in West Berkeley.
Martin acquired the name "Billy" as a result of his grandmother, who never mastered English, saying bello ("beautiful") repeatedly over the baby, who learned his birth name only when a teacher used it at school. The Martin couple broke up soon after Billy was born, and each later accused the other of infidelity. Martin would have no further contact with his father until he was in his thirties, and the conflict between his parents likely left him with emotional wounds.
With Al Martin having returned to his native Hawaii Territory, Jenny no longer used his name, either in conversation or as part of hers, and before Billy's first birthday had met John "Jack" Downey, a laborer and jack-of-all-trades, whom she married in late 1929, and whose name she took for herself, but not for her sons. Billy Martin later called his stepfather a "great guy". Jenny always regretted that fame came to her son under the name Billy Martin, not Billy Downey.
Martin was an indifferent student once he started school, and from the age of about 12 he was often in trouble with teachers or the principal. His unusual home situation, his small size and large nose, and his residence in poverty-stricken West Berkeley caused other children to mock him, leading to conflict. Intensely competitive and thin-skinned, he quickly gained a reputation as a street fighter who would do almost anything to win.
Sports proved an outlet for Martin's competitiveness. He boxed at an amateur level, but it was baseball that proved to be his calling. His older brother Tudo, 10 years his senior, had grown up with Augie Galan, an outfielder for the Chicago Cubs from 1934 to 1941 who continued in the major leagues until his retirement in 1949. Galan, like other professional ballplayers, made James Kenney Park in Berkeley his off-season training ground, for there was a well-maintained baseball field there. Tudo was a good enough ballplayer that he was often invited to play, and Billy would follow along. As the boy got to play more and more as he grew, Galan took a special interest in tutoring Martin in the art of baseball.
When Martin reached Berkeley High School, which he attended from 1942 to 1946, he was dressed worse than many students from the more upscale housing east of San Pablo Avenue, but gained acceptance through sports, especially baseball, raising his batting average from a poor .210 as a sophomore to an outstanding .450 as a senior. He was an aggressive player, and was involved in fights both in and out of baseball uniform. One such on-field incident his senior year led to his dismissal from the team and concerned the professional baseball teams considering signing him. He was given a workout by the Brooklyn Dodgers, but they chose another California infielder, Jackie Robinson.
The Oakland Oaks, a Pacific Coast League team, had been quietly scouting Martin for years, impressed with everything but his temper. Soon after Martin's high school graduation, Oaks trainer Red Adams persuaded the team's new manager, Casey Stengel, to give Martin a tryout. Stengel had seen Martin play in a high school all-star game, and though Martin did not play well, Stengel had told him that he had a future in baseball. Within weeks of the tryout, an infielder for the Oaks' Class D affiliate, the Idaho Falls Russets, was injured, and Stengel recommended that team owner Brick Laws sign Martin. Laws did so but first attempted, without success, to put a clause in the contract that would have nullified it if Martin misbehaved in a way similar to the fight that had ended his high school career.
## Playing career (1946–1961)
### Reaching the majors (1946–1949)
The 18-year-old Martin was unimpressive with Idaho Falls in 1946, hitting .254 while playing mostly third base, and racking up many throwing errors. He had a good spring training with the Oaks in 1947, but was sent to the Class C Phoenix Senators of the Arizona-Texas League. Martin felt he should have remained with the Oaks, and told Stengel so. The manager's response: "Prove me wrong".
Playing mostly day games in the arid Southwest in the era before widespread air conditioning, the Senators endured harsh playing and living conditions, as many of them boarded in a barracks beyond the right field fence. Nevertheless, Martin thrived there. Wearing the uniform number 1, a number he tried to secure with each team he played for, he hit .393, the highest average in organized baseball in 1947, drove in 173 runs, and was named the league's most valuable player. When the team's regular second baseman was injured in a fight with opposing catcher Clint Courtney — with whom Martin would lock horns himself — Martin was moved from third base, and would remain as a second baseman for most of the remainder of his playing career. Phoenix's season ended before that of the Oaks, and Martin was called up to the parent club. Though he did not play much, Martin won two games with doubles, and was an instant hit with the fans at Oaks Park.
When not playing, Martin closely shadowed Stengel, wanting to learn why the manager made the decisions he did. This impressed Stengel, who during his time as an outfielder for the New York Giants had sought to learn from their manager, John McGraw. Stengel and Martin grew closer in what has sometimes been described as a father-son relationship, as Stengel had no children, and Martin had been abandoned by his father. According to Martin biographer Peter Golenbock, "the two men, the punk kid and the old-time ballplayer, would develop a bond that would not be broken for a decade. Binding them was their deep love for the game of baseball."
Martin made the Oaks' roster in 1948, but was slow to get regular playing time, as the Oaks had a former major-leaguer at each position and Stengel did not want to use Martin until the young ballplayer was ready. Instead, the manager had Martin sit on the bench next to him as he pointed out nuances of the game. Martin also learned about life on and off the field from his teammates.
Stengel assigned veteran players to work with Martin and be his roommate on road trips; at first Mel Duezabou, a student of the art of hitting with a lifetime minor league batting average over .300, who improved Martin at the plate. Later in the season, Duezabou was replaced with Cookie Lavagetto, a fellow infielder and former Dodgers star who was able to help Martin with fielding and advise him on what to expect in the major leagues. As injuries depleted the Oaks' regulars, Martin got increasing playing time, and finished the season with a .277 batting average, 3 home runs and 42 runs batted in. He became a team leader, active in brawls on the field and a loud and annoying bench jockey in an era when a player often had to contend with a stream of insults from the opposing team's dugout. The Oaks won the PCL pennant and the Governors' Cup playoffs. Martin's reward for the championship was a new car, bought by Laws, but to his distress, Stengel's reward was the manager's job with the New York Yankees, leaving Martin feeling abandoned. He was especially dispirited because his lifelong desire was to be a Yankee.
Stengel's replacement with the Oaks was Charlie Dressen. Highly knowledgeable about the game, Dressen was initially wary of Martin as a Stengel favorite, but was won over by the second baseman's hard work and desire to learn. Martin's education continued under Dressen, as he learned such things as the art of stealing signs, and learned to try to force the other team into game-deciding mistakes. Although the team did not play as well as it had in 1948, Martin improved his statistics, hitting .286 with 12 home runs and 92 runs batted in. At the same time, Stengel, who was managing the Yankees to the 1949 American League pennant and a World Series triumph, talked of Martin to the New York press, leading many to assume he would soon be a Yankee. On October 13, 1949, Martin and fellow Oak Jackie Jensen were acquired by the Yankees.
### Yankee years (1950–1957)
Press coverage of Martin's sale by the Oaks to the Yankees dismissed him as a "utility infielder", calling him "Alfred M. Martin", a name he detested. He was among those younger Yankees players, including Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle, who reported in February 1950 to a pre-spring training instructional camp in Phoenix to work on fundamentals under Stengel's eye. Martin hoped to become the starting second baseman for the defending world champion Yankees, but the incumbent, Jerry Coleman, had just won the American League Rookie of the League award. On reporting to spring training in St. Petersburg, Florida, he stood out for his brashness if nothing else, taking care to correct the press on how to refer to him.
Confident of Stengel's protection, Martin sometimes defied Yankee coaches such as Frank Crosetti and Jim Turner, but won over most of his teammates as he showed his desire to learn and win, goals consistent with the "Yankee Way", that individual achievement was insignificant compared to team victory. Martin made his major league debut on April 18, 1950, Opening Day, for the Yankees as they visited the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, as a pinch hitter inserted in the eighth inning with the Yankees down, 9–4, with two men on base. Martin doubled off the Green Monster in left field to drive in the runners. The Yankees batted around and in his second at-bat of the inning, he singled with the bases loaded to drive in two more runs, the first time in major league history that a player got two hits in an inning in his debut game. Despite the feat, Martin was not made an everyday player, but sat next to Stengel in the dugout, listening and learning. When he did play, he quickly became a favorite of the Yankee Stadium crowd, and they would remain loyal to him for the rest of his life.
Despite his stellar start, Martin was little-used by the Yankees in 1950 and 1951, as Coleman remained the starting second baseman. Martin was sent to the minor leagues in May 1950 to give him everyday playing experience, a decision with which he vociferously disagreed, and so stated to Yankee general manager George Weiss, an outburst that Martin always believed poisoned the relationship between himself and the team front office. He was recalled after a month, but remained mostly on the bench, with only 39 plate appearances for the Yankees in 1950, batting .250. The Yankees won the pennant again, and swept the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1950 World Series, in which Martin did not play and Coleman was the Most Valuable Player. After the season, with the Korean War raging, the 22-year-old was drafted into the army, but gained a hardship discharge after two months, something that made him less of a hero in West Berkeley. He was discharged in late April, and rejoined the Yankees, but was used sparingly, Rookie of the Year Gil McDougald absorbing what playing time at second base was not used by Coleman. Martin, wearing uniform number 1 for the Yankees for the first time, hit .259 in 51 games. Martin helped bring rookie outfielder Mickey Mantle out of his shell, introducing him to New York nightlife. In the 1951 World Series, which the Yankees won in six games over the Giants, Martin did not bat, but was inserted as a pinch runner in Game Two with the Yankees leading by a run after losing Game One. Martin scored a crucial insurance run in the Yankee victory, evading the tag from the catcher, Roy Noble, and after the game was singled out for praise by Giants manager Leo Durocher.
Coleman's induction into the armed forces before the 1952 season opened the way for Martin to be the regular Yankee second baseman. His debut as such was delayed when he broke his ankle demonstrating the technique of sliding into second base on a television show in March, and it was not until May 12 that he made his regular season debut. Once he did, he hit .267 in 109 games, his highest as an everyday player, becoming the "sparkplug" that Stengel had sought for his team, energizing it. When Stengel offered \$100 to any player who let himself be hit by a pitch, Martin earned \$300 for the game. In the 1952 World Series against the Dodgers, Martin got 5 hits in 23 at-bats, but that included a three-run home run to break open Game Two and tie the series. In Game Four, with the Dodgers leading the Series two games to one and threatening to tie the one-run game in the fifth inning, Charlie Dressen, who was coaching third base for the Dodgers, called for the squeeze play. Martin stole the sign and the runner was out when pitcher Allie Reynolds threw a pitchout, killing the rally. In Game Seven, with the Yankees up 4–2 in the seventh inning, two outs, and the bases loaded, Jackie Robinson hit a high, wind-blown pop fly. When first baseman Joe Collins appeared to lose the ball in the sun, Martin raced in from second base, catching the ball in fair ground near home plate only inches off the grass. All three runners would most likely have scored had the ball dropped, giving the Dodgers the lead going into the eighth inning; Martin biographer David Falkner called the catch "one of the great moments in World Series history".
As Yankees' regular second baseman in 1953, Martin saw his average drop to .257, but set what would be career highs with 149 games played (146 at second base), 15 home runs and 75 runs batted in. He was also ejected for the first two occasions in his career, once for arguing balls and strikes, the other for fighting. With Martin's growing reputation as a fighter, opposing players often slid into second base hard, hoping to injure him: Stengel stated, "Billy's being hit with the hardest blocks this side of a professional football field." Nevertheless, he finished second in the league in fielding percentage among second basemen. The Yankees won their fifth consecutive pennant, and in the 1953 World Series, Martin dominated, collecting 12 hits (tying a series record) with 23 total bases (breaking Babe Ruth's record of 19) as the Yankees beat the Dodgers in six games; Martin's hit in the ninth inning of Game Six scored the winning run. He was elected the Series' Most Valuable Player. Stengel exulted, "Look at him. He doesn't look like a great player—but he is a helluva player. Try to find something he can't do. You can't."
There had been congressional investigations into whether athletes and others were given preferable treatment to avoid conscription and, in early 1954, Martin was drafted into the army, his renewed request for a hardship discharge denied. He complained to a reporter that he was given worse treatment than his fellow soldiers, allowed fewer weekend passes and not allowed to play on the Fort Ord baseball team. He missed the entire 1954 season, in which the Yankees, uniquely during Martin's career with them, did not win the pennant, and much of the 1955 season. He was transferred to Fort Carson in Colorado, where he was allowed to live off base. He played on and managed the baseball team, and rose to the rank of corporal. In August 1955, a furlough allowed him to return to the Yankees and, when they won the pennant, it was extended for the 1955 World Series. Although Martin batted .300 for the regular season, and .320 with four runs batted in during the Series, the Yankees lost to the Dodgers in seven games, and Martin berated himself for letting down Stengel. He was discharged from the army later in October, having been awarded the Good Conduct Medal.
During the 1956 season, Weiss began to hint to the media that Martin was a poor influence on his fellow players, especially on his roommate, Mantle, with whom he often caroused until the early hours of the morning. A dignified man, Weiss did not feel that Martin fit the image he wanted for the Yankees, and may have been offended by the player's outburst on being sent to the minors in 1950. By 1956, the Yankees were developing the next wave of infielders, including Bobby Richardson and Tony Kubek. Weiss would have liked to trade Martin, but was deterred by the fact that the second baseman was extremely popular with Yankee fans and with the press covering the team. Although Martin appeared in the 1956 All-Star Game—his only All-Star appearance as a player—his abilities as a player never fully returned after leaving the army. With Richardson progressing rapidly through the Yankee farm system, Martin worried that his days with the team were numbered. Nevertheless, he hit .264 with nine home runs for the Yankees in 1956, and in the 1956 World Series against the Dodgers, Martin played well both in the field and at the plate, getting the hit that gave the Yankees the lead for good in Game Four to tie the Series, and hitting .296 with two home runs as the Yankees won in seven games, thus finishing his World Series career as a player with a .333 batting average.
Weiss warned Martin before the 1957 season to avoid trouble, and the infielder did nothing to aid his own cause by injuring both himself and Mantle (the reigning MVP) in an intentional collision between their golf carts as they played a round on a Florida course during spring training. While Martin recovered from this and other injuries, Bobby Richardson played, showing a fielding range that Martin no longer possessed. But the incident that gave Weiss the leeway to trade Martin was a brawl at the Copacabana nightclub in New York on May 16. Although it was fellow Yankee Hank Bauer who was accused of throwing the first punch, Martin believed that Weiss would blame him, and as the trade deadline of June 15 approached, his foreboding and tension grew. Stories differ about how Martin learned he had been traded to the Kansas City A's on the trade deadline: biographer David Falkner stated that Martin, out of the lineup in the game at Kansas City's Municipal Stadium, was informed by farm director Lee MacPhail, and that Stengel refused to see Martin, but Martin in his autobiography alleged that he had been sitting in the bullpen and that Stengel came to inform him. Marty Appel, in his biography of Stengel, stated that Martin was called in to see Stengel, was told of the trade, and Martin blamed the manager for not preventing it. According to Appel, "No one had worn the Yankees uniform more proudly than Billy; it was like a fraternity jacket to him. An eighteen-year exile was beginning for him, and his sadness, bitterness, melancholy, resentment, and hurt never really faded. His career as a journeyman infielder—playing with six teams, none more than a year, and never to see the World Series again—had begun." Among the consequences of the trade was the loss of the relationship with Stengel, with whom he rarely spoke in the years that followed.
### Later career (1957–1961)
Martin switched dugouts after the trade to the A's, and in his first game got two hits, including a home run off the Yankees' Johnny Kucks. Then the Yankees left town, without Martin, who now faced playing for a seventh-place team with little hope of doing better. He hit .360 in his first ten games, but the A's lost nine of them. Although Martin hit .257 with Kansas City, an improvement over the .241 he was hitting with the Yankees, the A's lost 94 games, finishing 381⁄2 games behind the Yankees. At the end of the season, Martin was traded to the Detroit Tigers in a 13-player deal, and he stated angrily, "They just can't throw us [players] around from one club to another without us having a say-so."
Detroit manager Jack Tighe called Martin "the key to our future"; he was expected to electrify the team as he had the Yankees. Without talent on the field and Stengel in the dugout to back him up, Martin was unable to do that, as after a decent start, the Tigers settled down to a losing season, and the players became annoyed at Martin's ways. The Tigers had him play shortstop, but he lacked the range and the throwing arm needed to be effective, and made 20 errors for the season. He hit .255 with seven home runs, but the Tigers finished fifth, 15 games behind the Yankees. After the season, Martin and Al Cicotte were traded to Cleveland in exchange for Don Mossi, Ray Narleski and Ossie Álvarez.
With Martin at second base, the Indians finished second in 1959, five games behind the Chicago White Sox and ahead of the third-place Yankees. Despite the relatively good finish, Martin was embittered, contending that if manager Joe Gordon had used him properly, the Indians would have won the pennant. In August, Martin, who did not wear a batting helmet, was hit on the head by a pitch from Tex Clevenger of the Washington Senators, breaking a cheekbone and giving him an unconscious fear of being hit again, diminishing his effectiveness at the plate. He was traded, after the season, to the Cincinnati Reds; manager Fred Hutchinson hoped Martin could instill some fight into his team. Although he could not make the Reds a winner with his diminished skills, he still was a battler on the field, notoriously fighting pitcher Jim Brewer of the Chicago Cubs on August 4, 1960. In the aftermath of his beaning by Clevenger, teams pitched Martin inside, as did Brewer. After one such pitch, Martin, on the next, swung and let his bat go, though it landed far from the pitching mound. When he went out to retrieve it, Brewer approached, Martin swung at him, and sometime during the brawl, a punch broke Brewer's orbital bone, though whether it was Martin who did it or Reds pitcher Cal McLish is uncertain. Martin was ejected (his sixth and final ejection as a player), and was suspended for five games and fined by National League president Warren Giles. With Brewer out for the season, the Cubs sued Martin. Litigation dragged on for a decade and the case was eventually settled in 1969 for \$10,000 plus \$12,000 attorney's fees. Martin, who in the press defended his actions as justified given pitchers threw inside to him, asked, "Do they want a check or cash?"
Although Martin played 103 games for the Reds in 1960, batting .246, he had only three home runs and 16 runs batted in, and following the season was sold to the Milwaukee Braves. His old manager with the Oaks, Dressen, led the Braves, but even he could not find a starting position for Martin. He had only six at-bats for the Braves, with no hits, and on June 1, 1961, was traded to the Minnesota Twins for Billy Consolo. Martin, given the starting second baseman position, started well and finished well for the Twins, but in between had a prolonged batting slump. Between the Braves and Twins, he batted .242 for 1961, his lowest full-season average. He reported for spring training in 1962, but was soon approached by manager Sam Mele, a longtime friend, and told that he had been released by the team. No longer able to compete on the field, Martin's playing career was over at the age of 33.
## Scout, coach and minor league manager (1962–1968)
Martin accepted an offer by Twins owner Calvin Griffith to be a scout for the team. He also took a job with Grain Belt Brewery in public relations. The combination worked well; Martin proved himself a competent evaluator of talent, while selling the Twins in bars across Minnesota. He urged the Twins to sign pitching prospect Jim Palmer, but Griffith was unwilling to pay the \$50,000 signing bonus Palmer requested, and the pitcher went on to a Hall of Fame career with the Baltimore Orioles. With his survival in baseball on the line, Martin kept his nose clean, his drinking moderate, and his fists unclenched.
With manager Mele's consent, Griffith made Martin third base coach before the 1965 season, leading to immediate media speculation that when the Twins hit a rough patch, Martin would be appointed as manager. Mele later denied having any feeling that Martin was after his job, and the Twins experienced few losing streaks in 1965, winning the American League pennant. Martin worked with the players to make them more aggressive on the base paths. He recognized the talent of the young Rod Carew, and spent much time working with him to make him a better ballplayer. The Twins had tried to trade shortstop Zoilo Versalles the previous winter; Martin worked on his hitting and base running and Versalles was voted the league's Most Valuable Player. Although the Twins lost the 1965 World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers in seven games, Martin was given much of the credit for getting them there.
In 1966, Martin damaged his chances of promotion to the managerial job by getting in a fight with Twins traveling secretary Howard Fox. The Twins and Yankees shared a charter flight, and the players got rowdy. Martin refused Fox's request that he intercede with his former teammates, including Mantle and Ford, to get them to quiet down. When the Twins reached their hotel, Fox was slow to give Martin his room key, violating baseball's usual etiquette that the manager and coaches got theirs first. When Martin demanded it, Fox threw it at him, and after words were exchanged, Martin hit him in the face. Martin was fined by Griffith, a friend of Fox's. When Mele was fired in 1967, his replacement was not Martin, as had been widely speculated, but Cal Ermer.
The Twins started the 1968 season poorly and Martin was called into Griffith's office, expecting to be offered Ermer's job. Instead, the owner wanted to make Martin the manager of the Denver Bears, the Twins' top affiliate, at that time with an 8–22 record. Martin was reluctant to accept, but did when his wife Gretchen told him that he needed to prove his ability as a manager before getting a job as one in the major leagues. The Bears started well under .500, but by the end of the season had a winning record. Martin had stressed to the team that they were a single unit, with him as boss. He instituted the aggressive base running he had used in Minnesota, and focused on fundamentals. When the team lost, he told them (and anyone else within earshot) exactly why they had lost; third baseman Graig Nettles, who would play again for Martin as a major leaguer, stated Martin made the players afraid to lose. He defended them before the outside world, confronting umpires—he was ejected from games eight times. The team was 65–50 under Martin, and by season's end there was widespread speculation that Martin would be a major league manager in 1969. Despite the two AL expansion teams, the Seattle Pilots and Kansas City Royals, having vacancies, and expressing interest in hiring Martin, he stated that his loyalty was to the Twins, who had had another disappointing season. On October 11, 1968, the Twins gave Martin a one-year contract as manager. Said Griffith, "I feel like I'm sitting on a keg of dynamite."
## Managing career
### Minnesota Twins (1969)
As Twins manager, Martin continued the aggressive baseball he had urged on the team as third-base coach. The team lost the first four games of the season, on the road, but came home to the largest Opening Day crowd since the franchise moved to Minnesota. Winning streaks of 5 and 8 games in April established the team in first place in the new American League West and kept the fans coming to Metropolitan Stadium. Martin set a tone of willingness to do anything to win. When Oakland A's slugger Reggie Jackson hit home runs in his first two at bats against the Twins, Minnesota pitcher Dick Woodson threw a pitch behind Jackson's head. After a second pitch closer to Jackson's head than to the plate, the slugger charged the mound, provoking a full-scale brawl, for which Jackson later blamed Martin, who he said had ordered the pitches.
Despite the winning baseball, owner Griffith was less than enamored with Martin's conduct. Griffith wanted Martin to meet regularly with him to discuss the team; Martin repeatedly showed up during the time set aside for Griffith's daily nap. When pitcher Dave Boswell and outfielder Bob Allison got into a fight outside the Lindell A. C. sports bar in August, Martin joined the battle, repeatedly punching Boswell, who won 20 games that year. Martin claimed that Boswell had come at him first, which Boswell denied. Although it was Boswell who was fined by the team, Griffith considered firing Martin, but decided that the victories on the field justified keeping him. The Twins won the Western Division by 9 games over Oakland, with Boswell winning 8 games down the stretch.
The Twins played the Orioles, who had won 109 games during the regular season (the Twins had won 97) and who were managed by Earl Weaver in the 1969 American League Championship Series (ALCS). Baltimore won the first two games of the best-of-five series at home, with both games going extra innings. At home for Game Three, Martin was expected to start star pitcher Jim Kaat but instead chose Bob Miller, who was knocked out of the box in the second inning, and the Twins were eliminated.
Martin had been given a one-year contract for 1969; he asked for a two-year deal for 1970 and 1971. Griffith was unhappy both that Martin had not pitched Kaat (a friend of his) and that the explanation he had asked Martin for had been "Because I'm the manager". Martin's decision was defensible, as Kaat had been struggling with injuries, and Miller had won during the pennant race. Other events during the season, such as the fight with Boswell and Martin kicking former US vice president Hubert Humphrey out of the locker room when he tried to visit after a Twins loss also embarrassed the team. Twins executives had also received numerous complaints about Martin drinking heavily during road trips, and were angered when Griffith told Minneapolis Tribune columnist Sid Hartman off the record that the Twins were thinking of firing him. Although Martin had led the team to a division title, Fox and other Twins executives felt Martin was more trouble than he was worth and urged his dismissal. Griffith fired him on October 13, 1969. There was outrage among Twins fans, and attendance, which had been boosted by Martin's presence and the team's success, sank in 1970. The Twins won their second straight division title but again lost the ALCS to Baltimore in three games, this time with Kaat pitching—and losing—Game Three.
### Detroit Tigers (1971–1973)
Martin spent the 1970 season out of baseball for the first time since 1946, but stayed in the Twin Cities as an interviewer for Minneapolis station KDWB. He received nibbles of interest, including from A's owner Charlie Finley, and each later blamed the other for the failure to come to terms. The Detroit Tigers had won the World Series in 1968, but dropped below .500 two years later. Team general manager Jim Campbell felt that the team could win again with the right manager. On October 2, 1970, Campbell fired manager Mayo Smith and gave Martin a two-year deal (for 1971 and 1972) at an annual salary of \$65,000. Martin seemed to be an odd fit for the Tigers, given their straitlaced reputation under Campbell, but the general manager felt that Martin was the spark the Tigers needed to return to contention.
Martin announced that the Tigers would win the 1971 American League East title, and that the Orioles were over the hill. He made it clear that he was going to run the team his way, and his clubhouse tirades for poor play even during spring training were reported in the media and concerned Detroit management. He had a well-publicized feud with slugger Willie Horton, whom Martin repeatedly benched and who kept himself out of the lineup with an alleged injury that Martin disputed. There were repeated conflicts with umpires, and with personnel off the field: he accused the organist in Oakland of trying to distract his players, and the scoreboard operators in Baltimore of spying on his team. After a poor April, Martin's players won seven in a row to surge to within 41⁄2 games of the top-placing Red Sox near the start of June. The results helped establish Martin as one of the best managers in baseball, at least on the field. His generalship could not paper over the flaws in the ball club, and the Tigers finished second, 11 games behind the Orioles. Nevertheless, Martin led the Tigers to a 91–71 record, a 12-game improvement from 1970, proving to many people that his success in Minnesota had not been a fluke.
Martin was rewarded with a new two-year contract, through 1973, with an increase in salary. At spring training, Martin was relaxed and confident, his Tigers a favorite to win the American League East. The season started late, due to a player's strike, and the missed games were not made up, which left the teams playing an unequal number of games. Once play started, Martin was his usual self, berating opposing managers and the umpires from the dugout, and being ejected for it in the second game of the season, against Baltimore and Weaver. This was his first ejection as Tigers manager. There was a close AL East pennant race in 1972, when the Tigers and Orioles were joined by the Yankees and Red Sox in contending for the division title. With Detroit winning, those players hostile to Martin remained silent. The season came down to a three-game set between the Tigers and Red Sox, with Boston a half game ahead. The Tigers won the first two, though they lost the meaningless third game, making them the AL East champs by a half game.
In the 1972 American League Championship Series, the Tigers faced the Oakland A's. The Tigers lost Game One in extra innings. With the A's up 5–0 in Game Two, Tigers pitcher Lerrin LaGrow hit the speedy A's shortstop, Bert Campaneris, in the legs. Before a national television audience, Campaneris threw his bat towards the mound, and a brawl ensued. Many believed Martin had ordered Campaneris hit. The Tigers recovered from the 2–0 deficit by winning Games Three and Four at Tiger Stadium, but lost Game Five and the series. Martin was praised for taking the Tigers as far as he did, but his lineup choices for Game Five were questioned—playing catcher Bill Freehan with a broken thumb, while a healthy catcher, Duke Sims, played left field instead of Horton. Both of Martin's choices were involved in plays that resulted in A's runs, which a better-fielding player might have prevented. Nevertheless, Martin again received a revised two-year contract, through the 1974 season.
The 1973 season was not as successful for Martin and the Tigers. Nevertheless, Martin did have some successes, making John Hiller a successful closer after the pitcher had survived a heart attack, and discovering Ron LeFlore in a Michigan prison; LeFlore would go on to a successful major league career. Martin wanted Campbell to trade some aging veterans to renew the squad, but Campbell refused. Martin briefly quit during spring training when Campbell did not uphold a fine he had imposed on Horton. Factional conflict within the team, muted by the team's 1972 success, resurged as the team fell behind in the standings after spending much of the summer in a spirited three-way race with the Orioles and Yankees. Martin angered Campbell, owner John Fetzer, and other Tigers executives by criticizing the front office in the media. Campbell had defended Martin in the past when Fetzer expressed concern about Martin's off-field behavior, but became increasingly less willing to do so. In May of 1973, the Tigers were trailing the lowly Milwaukee Brewers in the standings, and when a sportswriter asked Martin if he thought the Brewers were legitimate contenders, Martin hotly replied, "If [the Brewers] can win with that club, then I'm a Chinese aviator." This comment irked Brewers fans, and when the Tigers next visited Milwaukee, Brewers fans displayed signs, including one, "Fly the Friendly Skies of China with Billy Martin", while Milwaukee County Stadium's organist would play the theme to Chinatown whenever Martin walked out to the pitching mound, as booed him. In August, when the Tigers returned to Milwaukee, the Brewers hosted a "Chinese Aviator Night", with fans dressing up and Martin serving as a judge in a contest. Despite being in first place in June, the Brewers ended up with a losing record.
On August 30, frustrated that umpires were not calling Indians pitcher Gaylord Perry for spitballs, Martin ordered his pitchers to do the same, and told the media what he had done after the game. He was suspended by AL president Joe Cronin for breaching league rules. This was the last straw for Campbell, who fired Martin before the suspension ran out.
### Texas Rangers (1973–1975)
Texas Rangers owner Bob Short was a person Martin knew and trusted from the time in the 1960s when Short was an executive with the Twins. After Martin was dismissed by the Tigers, Short told his manager, Whitey Herzog, that he would fire his own grandmother to have a chance to hire Martin. Short, days later, fired Herzog and hired Martin, provoking Herzog's comment, "I'm fired, I'm the grandmother."
Martin faced a serious challenge in trying to rebuild a team that was 47–81 and would lose 105 games that season. No pitcher on the staff won more than nine games that year, and the team had the worst fan attendance in baseball. But Martin felt Short understood him, and he was given a five-year contract that not only made him field manager, but gave him the powers of general manager as well. He would have complete authority over the 25-man roster, and would also be responsible for the farm system. Martin faced a receptive clubhouse; most of the players had grown up watching him as a Yankee on television.
Over the winter of 1973–1974, Martin made several trades, bringing Ferguson Jenkins from the Cubs in exchange for Bill Madlock. Jenkins and Jim Bibby would anchor the pitching staff. He promoted Jim Sundberg and Mike Hargrove to the Rangers from the lower minor leagues. Short sold the team to Brad Corbett just before the 1974 season began; the new owner retained Martin as manager, but did not allow him control of the roster.
The Rangers opened at Arlington Stadium against the two-time defending world champion A's: Martin billed the series as the meeting of the top two AL West teams though Las Vegas put the Rangers at 50–1 to win the division. The A's won two of three, but all the games were close. After winning a series at Oakland at the end of April marked by aggressive baserunning, the Rangers were in first place. Martin taught the Rangers to improve their play and to beware his rage; outfielder Tom Grieve later stated that he made the team afraid to lose.
The Rangers stayed close to the division lead through May and June, though they dropped to fourth place and eight games back at the All-Star break. The Rangers kept the race close until late September, and finished second, five games back, their record of 84–76 a considerable improvement on 1973. Martin was named AL Manager of the Year, and home attendance more than doubled.
Given their strong performance in 1974 and Martin's reputation for building winners, the Rangers were the favorite in the AL West for 1975 over the three-time defending world champion A's. The team underperformed, however, Jenkins going from 25 wins to 17 and other key players not doing as well as in 1974. After a slow start, the Rangers recovered to some extent, but near the end of June found themselves 12 games behind the A's. Relations between Martin and the Ranger front office were strained by off-field issues, including Martin's drinking and conflict with some of the players, including Sundberg. As he lost control of his team, Martin struck Rangers traveling secretary Burton Hawkins, allegedly for organizing a players' wives' club. In July, after a dispute with Corbett over whether to sign free agent catcher Tom Egan, Martin told the media that the owner, who had made a fortune selling plumbing pipes, "knows as much about baseball as I do about pipe". Corbett began consulting the minority owners to decide whether to fire Martin, and informed the manager of this. One day later, on July 20, after Martin ordered the public address announcer to play "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" during the seventh inning stretch instead of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" (as Corbett had instructed), he was fired.
### First stint with the Yankees (1975–1978)
#### 1975 and 1976
Martin was not out of work for very long. Two weeks after Texas fired Martin, manager Bill Virdon was fired by the Yankees. The former Yankee second baseman was hired to take his place, marking Martin's first time in a Yankee uniform since the 1957 trade. Some players and writers have concluded that he had long campaigned for the Yankee job. What is beyond dispute is that after Martin was dismissed by Texas, New York general manager Gabe Paul, acting on behalf of owner George Steinbrenner, quickly got in touch with Martin. An agreement soon followed, and Martin officially returned to the Bronx on August 1. Well aware of Martin's behavioral proclivities, Paul and Steinbrenner believed they could keep Martin under control. They not only wrote good-conduct clauses into Martin's contract, but picked the coaching staff themselves.
With little chance of catching the first-place Red Sox, Martin spent the remainder of the 1975 season evaluating his team, cultivating the press and getting ready for 1976. At that time, Paul was operating head of the franchise; Steinbrenner had been suspended from baseball by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn following his conviction for making illegal contributions to Richard Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign, but continued to make decisions (such as Martin's hiring) behind the scenes. With Martin at the helm, the Yankees went 30–26 in their final 56 games of the 1975 season; they ended the season in third place, where they had been when he took over.
Martin worked with Paul during the offseason to dispose of players such as Bobby Bonds and Doc Medich, obtaining in return Mickey Rivers, Willie Randolph and others. The 1976 Yankee season was probably his most trouble-free as a major league manager. Martin endeared himself to his players quickly by effectively winning a game in Milwaukee. He pointed out that the first-base umpire had, almost unnoticed, called time out just before an apparent game-winning grand slam by Don Money. The Yankees held on to win that game and quickly moved into first place. Steinbrenner had returned to the helm of the Yankees when Kuhn shortened his suspension during spring training, but did not interfere with Martin's managing, content to sit back and watch as the Yankees continued to win.
The Yankees won the AL East by 11 games over Baltimore, securing their first postseason appearance since 1964. In the 1976 American League Championship Series, they played Kansas City. Aggressive baserunning, plus bench jockeying that may have caused Royals third baseman George Brett to make two crucial errors, helped New York win Game One, but Kansas City won two of the next three. Martin's choice of Ed Figueroa to pitch the decisive Game Five at Yankee Stadium was controversial as Figueroa had not pitched well late in the season and had lost Game Two, but he was in good form and helped the Yankees to a 6–3 lead in the eighth inning—when Brett tied the game with a three-run home run. Martin did not let the home run faze him, and had a verbal exchange with the next batter, John Mayberry, which helped wake the Yankees up from their stunned disbelief at Brett's home run. Yankee first baseman Chris Chambliss drove the first pitch of the bottom of the ninth over the right field wall, garnering the Yankees their first pennant since 1964, and Martin his first as a manager. The Yankees faced the defending world champion Reds in the 1976 World Series, and lost in four straight games. Martin was ejected from Game Four, at Yankee Stadium, after rolling a baseball towards umpire Bruce Froemming, the only Yankee to ever be kicked out of a World Series game.
#### 1977 championship season
In the offseason, Steinbrenner sought to sign free agent outfielder Reggie Jackson, convinced that he would add punch to the middle of the Yankee lineup. Steinbrenner wooed the slugger, taking him to lunch at the 21 Club and walking with him on Manhattan's sidewalks as fans called out to Jackson, urging him to become a Yankee. Though New York did not make the highest offer, Jackson signed with the team. Sources record Martin's views on Jackson's signing differently: Pennington stated that Martin was not opposed and told Steinbrenner he could use a right fielder, whereas Golenbock deemed Martin "certainly didn't want Reggie", feeling that Jackson was too much of a prima donna, who might rebel against the manager's authority, and be "tougher to handle than a bull at a rodeo". Falkner wrote that while Martin did not see Jackson as filling the team's needs, he was not opposed. Both Martin and Paul stated that once Bobby Grich was signed by the California Angels, Martin supported signing Jackson. Nevertheless, Martin was embittered by Steinbrenner taking Jackson to famous restaurants when he had not invited Martin to lunch, even though the manager was spending the offseason in nearby New Jersey.
When the Yankees lost six of the first eight games of the 1977 season, Steinbrenner called separate meetings with the players, the manager and the press, and told Martin that he had better get the team to turn things around or he could expect to be fired. Steinbrenner told the press what he had told Martin. In May, Jackson alienated most of his teammates by saying in an interview that he, rather than the respected team captain, Thurman Munson, was "the straw that stirs the drink" on the team. Martin was drinking heavily, and had briefly quit in spring training following an argument with Steinbrenner, who was, according to Falkner, "the owner whose idea of 'hands-on' was a stranglehold". Jackson's ties to Steinbrenner, who had given him his contract, made Martin powerless to discipline the slugger. Golenbock noted,
> For the rest of the season Billy Martin would have to spend the majority of his time worrying about the egos of George Steinbrenner and Reggie Jackson rather than concentrating on managing his team. His biggest headache would be George's pet player. Billy knew what he had to do to control Reggie Jackson, but he was impotent to do it as long as George Steinbrenner protected Jackson.
The question of whether the strife between Martin and Jackson involved a racial element has divided Yankee players and those who have written about the 1977 team. In his 2013 autobiography, Jackson stated that there was, and that Martin and some white Yankees would tell racist jokes. Among black Yankees who were there when Martin was, Elliott Maddox agreed with Jackson but others, such as Chambliss, denied there was racism.
Tensions between Martin and Jackson exploded on national television on June 18 at Fenway Park, the NBC Saturday afternoon Game of the Week, with the Yankees a half game behind the Red Sox. Martin pulled Jackson off the field mid-inning (replacing him with Paul Blair) for failing to hustle on a shallow outfield fly ball by Jim Rice, allowing Rice to reach second base. The enraged Martin had to be restrained by coaches Elston Howard and Yogi Berra from getting into a fight with Jackson in the dugout, scenes shown across the nation by NBC. Steinbrenner was convinced that he should fire Martin, but negotiations brokered by backup catcher Fran Healy secured a truce. Nevertheless, the rumors that Martin would be fired, some originated by Steinbrenner, would continue season-long. All of this went on in the full glare of New York's newspapers and, with the public firmly on Martin's side, Steinbrenner stayed his hand. According to Appel in his history of the Yankees, "the team was winning, the turnstiles were clicking, and the Yanks were dominating the sports pages".
By August 7, there was renewed conflict on the team, including between Martin and Jackson, and the Yankees had fallen five games behind the Red Sox. Martin had pledged to bat Jackson cleanup, as he wanted, but had rarely done so. Healy and Munson interceded with Martin, and when Martin batted Jackson fourth on August 10, both Jackson and the team responded by going on hot streaks. Despite a season of turmoil, the Yankees won 40 of their last 50 games to take the division by 21⁄2 games over both Boston and Baltimore. Appel noted, "The '77 Yanks won 100 games and the division title, but Billy Martin looked much more like a man who had taken each of the 62 defeats as a sock in the face. Hidden behind dark glasses, losing weight, drinking excessively, he had been through hell and back."
The Yankees played the Royals again in the 1977 American League Championship Series, the teams split the first two games, at Yankee Stadium, and the Royals won Game Three in Kansas City. Needing to win two straight on the road to win the pennant, the Yankees won Game Four, and Martin benched Jackson from the starting lineup in Game Five, feeling that he did not hit Royals pitcher Paul Splittorff well. In the eighth inning, with the Yankees losing 3–1, Martin put Jackson in as a pinch hitter and Jackson singled off reliever Doug Bird to drive in a run. The Yankees scored three runs in the ninth to win their second straight pennant, 5–3.
The 1977 World Series was against the Los Angeles Dodgers. In Game One in New York, the Yankees won 4–3 in 12 innings on a single by Blair, who had replaced Jackson late in the game for defensive reasons. The Yankees lost Game Two, and on the off day before Game Three at Dodger Stadium, there was more conflict in the press between Martin and Jackson. A conference in Gabe Paul's hotel room smoothed matters over, and the Yankees won Games Three and Four, but lost Game Five to send the series back to New York. Prior to Game Six, the Yankees announced that Martin was being given a bonus and an extended contract, relieving some of the intense pressure on him—the media had reported that he would be fired if the Yankees lost the World Series. Jackson, who had been mockingly dubbed Mr. October by Munson during the conflict before Game Three, made the name his own by hitting three home runs off three Dodger pitchers on consecutive pitches, and the Yankees won 8–4, before a jubilant crowd which invaded the field after the final pitch. Jackson and Martin were interviewed for television with arms around each other. Golenbeck noted that Martin "had fought the other teams in the league, fought his star player, and fought his owner, who respected no man". According to Appel, "it would be the only world championship of Martin's managing career, and it was a painful one".
#### 1978 and first departure
The events of 1977 placed Martin among the most prominent New York celebrities, a status he would keep until his death, as headline writers would refer to "Billy" without fear of readers misunderstanding who was meant. He was seen in the city's nightlife, often with different young women, at a time when his second marriage was disintegrating after years of turmoil. He also garnered numerous endorsement deals, but cashed the checks rather than pay taxes on them. As a result, he would be under constant scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service for the last decade of his life. Paul left to run the Indians after the 1977 season and was replaced by Al Rosen. Paul's departure removed one of the buffers between Martin and Steinbrenner; Martin blamed the owner for constant interference during the season.
There was no relief from conflict when the 1978 season began, with Mickey Rivers benched after appearing to loaf after a fly ball, and an alcohol-fueled altercation between team members on an airplane that helped put an end to the Yankees flying on commercial airlines in favor of charter flights. Steinbrenner blamed Martin for failure to keep discipline. Martin did not believe in trying to regulate the players' conduct off the field, something he had learned from Casey Stengel. Injuries to several players, including much of the starting staff, meant the Yankees did not commence the season as well as the previous year. By mid-June, the Yankees were seven games behind the Red Sox, and Steinbrenner was impatient. Martin was under extreme stress for much of the summer amid repeated rumors that he would be fired.
By July 17, the Yankees were 13 games behind Boston. That day, against the Royals, Jackson came to the plate in the bottom of the tenth inning with Munson on base and Martin put the bunt sign on. After Jackson fouled the first pitch off, the sign was taken off, with Jackson instructed to swing away. Jackson tried to bunt the next two pitches, and popped out. A furious Martin wanted Jackson suspended for the remainder of the season after the game, but agreed to suspend Jackson for five games after consulting with upper management. Matters came to a head when Jackson returned. Jackson told reporters that he did not know why Martin had suspended him. Martin also learned, from White Sox owner Bill Veeck, that Steinbrenner had been trying to arrange a trade of managers with the White Sox while publicly insisting that Martin would finish out the 1978 season. The plan called for White Sox manager Bob Lemon to go to the Yankees, with Martin succeeding Lemon in Chicago. However, the deal was not made and Lemon was subsequently fired by Veeck. Martin told reporters of Jackson and Steinbrenner (referring to the latter's illegal contributions to Nixon), "The two of them deserve each other. One's a born liar; the other's convicted."
The next day, July 24, 1978, Martin announced he was stepping aside for health reasons at a tearful press conference. He did so on the advice of his longtime legal adviser, Louisiana judge Eddie Sapir, who concluded earlier in the day that the Yankees would almost certainly fire him for cause. By resigning for reasons of health, Martin obligated Steinbrenner to honor his contract. Steinbrenner replaced Martin with Lemon. There was considerable anger among Yankee fans at Martin's forced departure, and towards Steinbrenner; some holders of season tickets burned them outside Yankee Stadium.
### Billy II: Second stint with the Yankees (1979)
Steinbrenner almost immediately had second thoughts about Martin's departure, and negotiations for his return, including meetings between the two, began within two days of the resignation. At first, the plan was for Martin to return in 1979, working elsewhere in the organization until then, but Rosen felt Lemon, who replaced Martin, needed to be given a full year. The talks were successfully kept quiet, and at Old-Timers' Day at Yankee Stadium, July 29, 1978, Martin was introduced as the Yankee manager for 1980 and after by public address announcer Bob Sheppard, meeting an ovation from the crowd reputed to be second only to that given Lou Gehrig on his retirement in 1939. However, Golenblock believed it might have been greater, saying, "The fans liked Gehrig. They loved Billy."
The re-hiring was only a verbal commitment, and was to some extent dependent on Martin staying out of trouble, which he did not do. During the offseason, Martin engaged in fisticuffs with Reno Gazette reporter Ray Hagar while visiting the city as a guest of the Reno Bighorns basketball team. Steinbrenner insisted that Martin could return to the Yankees only if there was neither conviction nor out-of-court settlement, and this occurred, though money likely changed hands behind the scenes. In the interim, the Yankees, under Lemon, had made a dramatic comeback to win the division, pennant and their second consecutive World Series over the Dodgers.
In 1979, the Yankees got off to a slow start under Lemon. Injuries to Jackson and Gossage, and key players proving less effective than the year before had the Yankees reeling. Steinbrenner fired Lemon on June 18 and brought back Martin. The Yankees failed to improve, and Munson's death in a private plane crash on August 2 devastated the team. The Yankees were 34–30 when Martin took over and finished 89–71, in fourth place. After the season, Martin got into a fight with marshmallow salesman Joseph Cooper at a hotel in Minneapolis. Cooper said that Martin should not have won his American League Manager of the Year award, which he believed should have gone to Dick Williams or Earl Weaver. Martin, in his autobiography, replied by mocking Cooper's profession and in the process angered him to the point where Cooper challenged Martin to a fight. Martin responded by wagering \$500 that he could beat Cooper and proceeded to do so. Facing pressure from the commissioner's office to do something about Martin's off-field conduct, Steinbrenner fired Martin five days later.
### Oakland Athletics
Martin did not get any immediate interest after being dismissed by the Yankees, but in February 1980, Oakland owner Charlie Finley sought to hire him. The A's had fallen far from their championship heyday of the early 1970s as Finley had refused to go along with the escalating salaries of free agency. In 1979, the team was 54–108 (.333), the second-worst record in baseball, and drew less than 4,000 per home game. In hopes of reviving the franchise, Finley turned to Martin. While the job brought Martin back to his East Bay roots, he was well aware that it might be his last chance, both because of the conflict that surrounded him and his lack of success with the 1979 Yankees.
One of the players under contract to the A's was Glenn Burke, who in 1982 would become the first MLB former player to reveal he was gay. Claudell Washington later stated that Martin introduced Burke, "Oh, by the way, this is Glenn Burke and he's a f—-t.'" Burke suffered a knee injury during 1980 spring training; Burke's roommate Mike Norris stated that Martin used this as cover to send him to the minor leagues, not wanting him on the team. According to Norris, Martin cut Derek Bryant because the manager mistook him for Burke, stating "get that m---------ing homosexual out of there"; neither Burke nor Bryant ever played in MLB again.
The 1980 A's had few standouts, and many of the young players were in awe of Martin: some who later became stars credited Martin with developing them. He had Rickey Henderson steal only on signs until Henderson learned how to read pitchers in their windup; then Martin turned Henderson loose. According to Pennington, "under Billy's tutelage, Henderson became the best leadoff hitter and base stealer in the history of Major League Baseball." Many in baseball were surprised to find the A's only 21⁄2 games behind the heavily favored Kansas City Royals at the end of May. The A's finished second in the AL West with an 83–79 record. Although they were 14 games behind the Royals, the 29-game improvement was enough to garner Martin a Manager of the Year award. Attendance at the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum rose by over 500,000, a 175% increase, enabling Finley to sell the team at a better price.
The new owners, the Haas family, owners of Levi Strauss, were inexperienced in baseball. They gave Martin the additional title of player development director, with complete authority over the baseball side of the operation–effectively making him his own general manager. Martin brought his aggressive style of play, which was dubbed "Billyball" by a sportswriter early in the 1981 season. The name stuck; the A's later trademarked it. The A's were at 20–3 (.870) in early May, Martin appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and the five-man rotation was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Mike Norris, Rick Langford, Matt Keough, Steve McCatty, and Brian Kingman had a cumulative ERA of 1.42. They also threw 94 complete games–far and away the most in the American League–in part because Martin did not trust his untested bullpen. He was applauded by baseball fans across the country even when he was kicked out of a game and suspended by the league for a week for kicking dirt on the umpire. The Oakland momentum was finally checked by the 1981 Major League Baseball strike, which shut down baseball for nearly two months midseason. The season was split into two halves, the division leaders at the time of the strike (in the AL West, the A's) to play the second-half winners (the Royals) in a special division series. The A's won in three straight games to face the Yankees in the League Championship Series. The opportunity to beat the Yankees meant much to Martin, and Steinbrenner, seeing the Oakland success, was privately stating that he might have been too quick to fire Martin after the marshmallow salesman incident. But the veteran New York lineup and pitching staff was able to dominate the A's as the Yankees swept the series in three games.
With the best combined record in the American League and second-best combined record in all of baseball in 1981, expectations were high for the A's in 1982. However, the season did not go well for the A's, who never got much over .500. They had a 17–14 (.548) record after a win on May 10, then cooled down. By the All-Star break in mid-July, they were 38–50 (.432), twelve games back in sixth place, well out of the pennant race. None of the starting pitchers would match their 1981 form, and none ever would, leading to accusations from baseball historians and statisticians that Martin abbreviated their careers by overusing them in 1981. In 2006, Rob Neyer estimated that the four top starters from the 1981 team threw anywhere from 120 to 140 pitches per complete game—a heavy workload for pitchers as young as the A's rotation had been in 1981. The A's finished at 68–94 (.420), fifth in the AL West, easily the worst full-season record of Martin's managerial career.
On October 20, 1982, three weeks after the season ended, the A's fired him with three years remaining on his contract. Although the Haases did not hold Martin responsible for the on-field debacle, they had grown increasingly concerned about his off-field behavior and feared he was growing unstable. Incidents included considerable drinking and traveling with a mistress while on the road. The last straw came when Martin trashed his own office after team officials refused him a loan to pay a tax debt. There has been speculation that Martin had been assured by Steinbrenner that he would be Yankee manager in 1983 if he could get himself fired by Oakland, and he may have been acting to that end.
### Remaining stints with the Yankees
The Yankees had finished fifth in 1982, their first losing record in the Steinbrenner era, doing so under three managers—Lemon, Gene Michael and Clyde King—all fired by Steinbrenner.
On January 11, 1983, the Yankees announced that Martin had been hired as manager under a long-term contract. He would remain on the Yankees' payroll for the rest of his life. Jackson had departed for the California Angels, but other Yankees from Martin's earlier tenures remained, such as Randolph and Ron Guidry, and the team had added strong players like Dave Winfield and Don Baylor. Steinbrenner had pledged non-interference but, as the team struggled early in the season, resumed his second-guessing of Martin, both directly and by leak to the media. As relations between owner and manager deteriorated, Martin had conflicts with reporters and a brawl with a patron in an Anaheim bar.
During the 1983 season, Martin was involved in one of the most controversial regular season games, known as the Pine Tar Incident, when Martin challenged a home run by George Brett on the grounds that the amount of pine tar on the bat broke the rules. Brett was ruled out and the home run disallowed; as this occurred with two out in the top of the ninth, it ended the game with the Yankees leading 4–3. American League President Lee MacPhail ruled in favor of the Royals' protest. The game was resumed some weeks later with Kansas City leading 5–4 and two out in the top half of the ninth. At the start of the resumed game, Martin tried to protest on the grounds that Brett had missed a base. The umpires had anticipated this, and had obtained an affidavit from the crew who had worked the original game saying that Brett had indeed touched all the bases. The Yankees did not play as well during and after the distraction of the Pine Tar Game, and fell further behind the division-leading Orioles. The Yankees finished second, 91–71, seven games behind the Orioles. On December 16, Steinbrenner removed Martin as manager, giving him a scouting assignment, and replacing him with Berra.
The Yankees finished third under Berra, 17 games behind the Tigers. When, at the start of the 1985 season, Steinbrenner pledged that Berra would remain manager for the whole season, there was immediate speculation that Martin would return at the earliest opportunity. As it turned out, Steinbrenner fired Berra after 16 games and replaced him with Martin. Stated Martin, "George and I have the greatest relationship I've ever had with him." With an MVP season from Don Mattingly and a strong effort from Rickey Henderson, who had been acquired by the Yankees, the team played well throughout the summer, coming to within a game and a half of the division-leading Toronto Blue Jays on September 12. They then lost eight in a row, and as the Yankees fell out of the race, according to Pennington, "Martin seemed to melt down with it." On September 22, 1985, while at a hotel bar in Baltimore, Martin fought one of his pitchers, Ed Whitson, who was larger, heavier and trained in martial arts. Martin suffered a broken arm. The Yankees recovered to win 97 games, but finished two games back of the Blue Jays, eliminated on the second to last day of the season. On October 27, 1985, Martin was fired again as Yankee manager, replaced by longtime Yankee player Lou Piniella. Nevertheless, Steinbrenner, believing that Martin could again bring a championship to the Yankees and, fearing he might do so elsewhere, increased Martin's salary; the four-time manager of the Yankees turned down lucrative offers from the White Sox and Indians.
Steinbrenner kept Martin as a close advisor in 1986; he was formally part of the broadcasting staff under his personal services contract, which the owner extended so that Martin was now earning over \$300,000 per year, a sum he was unlikely to match as manager elsewhere. Steinbrenner had considerable affection for Martin and wanted him to be without financial worries. Martin had long wanted to see his number 1 retired by the Yankees. Seeking to keep his past and future manager happy, Steinbrenner agreed, and Billy Martin Day took place at Yankee Stadium on August 10, 1986. At the ceremony, during which the number was retired and Martin given a plaque in Monument Park, he stated, "I may not have been the greatest Yankee to ever put on the uniform but I was the proudest."
New York finished second behind the Red Sox in 1986, but were never really in contention, and finished fourth in 1987. After the season, Piniella was asked to accept a promotion to general manager so that Steinbrenner could make Martin manager for a fifth time in 1988. Despite minimal expectations, Martin got the 1988 Yankees off to a good start. However, on the night of May 7, Martin was involved in a brawl at a Dallas-area nightclub in which he came out worst. Already foreseeing the end, and with marital troubles, on May 30, Martin was kicked out of a game against the A's, flinging dirt on umpire Dale Scott. Martin was suspended for three games and fined by the league. However, the umpires' union thought this was too lenient. The American League crew chiefs announced that Martin would be ejected as soon as he left the Yankee dugout. A month later, Steinbrenner fired Martin, citing "a combination of factors" in explaining his decision; Pennington suggested that while many Yankee fans took to talk radio in anger at Martin's firing, there was less outrage than there had been in the 1970s, and greater concern for Martin as a person. He became a special adviser to Steinbrenner, though in practice he had no duties and rarely visited New York.
Piniella returned as manager, but was fired at the end of the 1988 season after the Yankees played sub-.500 ball during his second stint. Steinbrenner replaced him with Dallas Green. The Yankees saw little success under Green in 1989, and he was fired in August, replaced by Bucky Dent. Steinbrenner was unconvinced that Dent could lead the Yankees back to a championship, and planned to keep Martin close at hand as manager-in-waiting should Dent falter in 1990. He apparently told Martin of this during a November meeting at Yankee Stadium. Soon afterward, Martin got in touch with several of his former coaches and told them to be ready to join him for a sixth managerial tenure with the Yankees.
## Death
Martin was still a special consultant to Steinbrenner when he was killed in a low speed single-vehicle accident on Christmas Day 1989. His vehicle ran into a drainage culvert near the entrance of the driveway to his farm in Port Crane, north of Binghamton, New York. He was pronounced dead at a hospital in Johnson City, New York.
Also present in the vehicle that night was Martin's friend Bill Reedy, who had been drinking with Martin at a local bar, and who was seriously injured in the accident. Reedy at first stated that he had driven the vehicle with Martin the passenger but after learning that Martin had died, changed his story, saying that he had lied to protect Martin against the consequences of a drunk driving conviction. He was convicted in a jury trial of driving with a blood alcohol level of .10, was fined, and his license suspended. A subsequent civil trial also found he was the driver. Golenbock, who wrote his book after the criminal trial but before the civil, was convinced that Martin was the driver. In this, he joined Martin's children and some of his close friends, like Mickey Mantle, who believed Martin would not have allowed another to drive him that night. Martin's biographers point to inadequacies in the police investigation. Pennington noted that those who believe Martin was the driver are the minority; Reedy was seen holding the car keys as the two left the bar, and the positions of the men when rescuers arrived pointed to Reedy being the driver. No autopsy was performed, allegedly due to opposition by Martin's widow and by Steinbrenner; New York City Medical Examiner Michael Baden was allowed to examine the body.
Martin was eulogized by Cardinal John O'Connor at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, before his interment at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York. His grave is located about 150 feet (46 m) from Babe Ruth's, in Section 25. The following epitaph, spoken by Martin at his number retiring ceremony at Yankee Stadium in 1986, appears on the headstone: "I may not have been the greatest Yankee to put on the uniform, but I was the proudest." Steinbrenner and former United States President Richard Nixon, along with many New York Yankee greats, attended Martin's funeral service.
## Managerial record
## Managerial techniques
Bill James noted that "Billy Martin, of course, improved every team he ever managed in his first year in control, usually by huge margins. Within a year or two, all of those teams were ready to get rid of him." According to Chris Jaffe in his book evaluating baseball managers, "Martin was the perfect manager to hire if you wanted an immediate improvement and the worst manager for a team seeking sustained success." Part of this, Jaffe argued, was because Martin "would do whatever it took to win that day, and not worry about any negative side effects in the future", even if it meant a shortened career for his players. The subsequent ineffectiveness of the young starting pitchers on the 1981 A's is cited by Jaffe as one example of this; others include pitcher Catfish Hunter, who completed every game he started but one during Martin's partial season with the 1975 Yankees, and who was never the same pitcher after that year, and Ferguson Jenkins with Texas in 1974, who pitched 29 complete games for the Rangers, and who declined thereafter. A similar attitude permeated his use of relief pitchers: "he wanted who he wanted when he wanted without concern towards keeping their arms well rested."
In 1988, the Elias Sports Bureau proclaimed Martin the best manager in major league history, based on modeling that found that Martin's teams won 7.45 more games per year than they should have as predicted by statistics, higher than any other manager. He was the first manager to have led four different teams to the postseason, a feat that would not be matched until 2012 nor bettered until 2020, by which time the postseason had expanded greatly from Martin's day. Martin sought to catch the other team by surprise, using such techniques as stealing home—once having two Twins steal home on different pitches of the same at bat, with the slugger Harmon Killebrew at the plate. Stealing home is a tactic unlikely to succeed, yet Martin made it work, and his teams got better. Jaffe noted that with Minnesota in 1969, Martin ended such risky tactics well before the end of the season, by which time he had set the tone he wanted both with his team, and with opponents. According to Jimmy Keenan and Frank Russo in their biography of Martin for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), "He played the game hard and made no excuses for the way he handled himself on or off the field. Many people, including his off-and-on boss, George Steinbrenner, considered Martin a baseball genius for the intuitive way he managed his teams."
Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa stated of him, "without reservation I would call Billy the most brilliant field manager I ever saw. He was unmatched. None of us felt up to him." Stengel stated in an interview a month before his death in 1975, "He's a good manager. He might be a little selfish about some things he does and he may think he knows more about baseball than anybody else and it wouldn't surprise me if he was right." When asked why he had admired Martin as a player, Stengel replied, "If liking a kid who never let you down in the clutch is favoritism, then I plead guilty." James deemed Martin the third-most successful manager of the 1970s, behind Sparky Anderson and Earl Weaver, and the most controversial. Pennington also noted that those who fired Martin for his off-field behavior went out of their way to praise what he had done on the field. Campbell, for instance, said that "from foul line to foul line, Billy did a good job," while the A's told Sapir that "we won't find a better manager" than Martin.
Falkner noted that what Martin wanted was "to win, period", and quoted him as saying, "I would play Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo on my team if I thought it would help me win." Willie Randolph stated, "you always knew if you got to the eighth or ninth inning and you were tied or one run down, Billy would find a way to win". Falkner noted, "he wanted to win, that was all. And for the time he was in the game, everyone knew it. And he won." Jaffe suggested that the person Martin was most akin to was not any other baseball manager, but Hernando Cortez, the conquistador who burned his own ships after arriving in Mexico, forcing his soldiers to conquer or die. "That was Billyball, sixteenth century style."
Pennington believed that Martin was very much a person of his times: "In the age of several round-the-clock ESPN channels, the ceaseless chatter of sports talk radio, and omnipresent smartphone cameras, Billy could not exist. At least not as an employed baseball manager." Pennington suggested, though, that had Martin been born 20 years later, his friends would have confronted him about his drinking problem; in Martin's day, such things were more often ignored. Pennington believes Martin's reputation for brawling and drinking has kept him out of the Hall of Fame; even if other managers who are in the Hall, such as Weaver and Leo Durocher, got into fights and drank sometimes to excess, they did not acquire the same reputation for those things as did Martin. Golenbock suggested that Martin's alcoholism, together with his pride in being a Yankee kept him in a relationship with Steinbrenner that kept him willing to try to manage the team again and again, despite the difficult relationship with the owner.
## Personal life and public image
Martin was married four times and had two children, a daughter named Kelly Ann and a son named Billy Joe. His first marriage was to Lois Berndt, who was the mother of Kelly Ann. She divorced him in 1955, after he had contested the action for more than a year on the grounds that he was Catholic. He married Gretchen Winkler in 1961. Billy Joe was born of that marriage; his parents divorced in 1979. He was married a third time, to Heather Ervolino, while he was managing in Oakland. He married his mistress, freelance photographer Jillian Guiver, in January 1988.
Heather Ervolio sued Martin in 1986 for \$500,000, aimed at halting her eviction from the luxury home they had shared for five years. She alleged that Martin began seeing her when she was 16 and was still married to his second wife, Gretchen Winkler, and then abruptly abandoned her. She alleged this was a pattern of behavior for Martin, that he had abandoned his previous wife Jill at a bar to marry Heather in 1982. After his death the feud between Martin's children and his widow Jill became a prominent story in the New York newspapers. Billy's children and other relatives alleged that Jill was hiding their inheritance and in protest several family members refused to attend his funeral.
Martin and Steinbrenner appeared together in the series of "Tastes Great!...Less Filling!" commercials for Miller Lite beer. In one, filmed in 1978, during the final days of Martin's first stint with the Yankees, Steinbrenner fires Martin, who says, "Oh, not again". Within weeks, Martin was forced to resign over the "one's a born liar, and the other's convicted" statement. The commercial aired again in June 1979, following Martin's return to manage the Yankees a second time, but with Steinbrenner saying "You're hired."
In 1978, Martin played himself in the CBS TV movie One in a Million: The Ron LeFlore Story. Martin was a guest ring announcer at the inaugural WrestleMania in March 1985. On May 24, 1986, on the season finale of Saturday Night Live, co-host Martin was "fired" by executive producer Lorne Michaels for being "drunk" in a skit, slurring his lines. In retaliation, Martin set the dressing room on fire, a staged scene set as a cliffhanger for the following season.
In 1978, Martin and sports agent Doug Newton opened Billy Martin's, a western wear boutique in New York City. Newton bought out Martin in 1982; the store remained open until 2010.
## Appraisal
Pennington, writing over 20 years after Martin's death, explained, "Billy was beloved because he represented a traditional American dream: freedom. He lived independent from rules. He bucked the system ... He told his boss to shove it. Often." The biographer complained that Martin, in the era of video clips and ESPN, has been reduced to a caricature: the man who kicked dirt on umpires, battled with Reggie Jackson in a dugout and who was forever being hired and fired, something that ignores a record of achievement both as player and manager. Appel noted, "There was never a more prideful Yankee. Or a more complicated one."
James wrote, "I suppose one could say the same about Billy Martin or about Richard Nixon ... had he not been so insecure, he could have resisted the self-destructive excesses which gradually destroyed him". Pennington, who covered the Yankees as a newspaper reporter from 1985 to 1989, described Martin as "without question one of the most magnetic, entertaining, sensitive, humane, brilliant, generous, insecure, paranoid, dangerous, irrational, and unhinged people I had ever met". Golenbock, who co-wrote Martin's autobiography, said of him, "but because Billy was an alcoholic who drank and fought publicly, and because the man for whom he worked destroyed his reputation through constant public denigrations and firings, he may never join the hallowed hall where he should rightfully be placed next to his mentor, Casey Stengel."
Mike Lupica of the Daily News wrote that "Yankee fans never seemed to see him drunk, or nasty, or as Steinbrenner's toady, the way others did. They looked the other way, again and again and again. They always saw him as Billy the Kid." Pennington noted that the new owners of Martin's farm sometimes find fans wanting to see where he died, or makeshift memorials by the roadside where the accident occurred. Martin's grave has remained well-visited by Yankee fans, sometimes before driving to the Bronx to take in a home game. Andrew Nagle, who oversaw the cemetery, stated "people want to leave some acknowledgement of what he meant to them ... we don't let go of the people that touched us ... It's the same with Billy Martin. People won't let him go. They won't forget him."
## See also
- List of Major League Baseball managers by wins
- New York Yankees managers and ownership
- Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame
|
46,387,997 |
250t-class torpedo boat
| 1,135,134,635 |
Boat of the Austro-Hungarian Navy
|
[
"Naval ships of Yugoslavia captured by Germany during World War II",
"Naval ships of Yugoslavia captured by Italy during World War II",
"Ships built in Croatia",
"Ships built in Fiume",
"Ships built in Trieste",
"Torpedo boats of the Kriegsmarine",
"Torpedo boats of the Regia Marina",
"Torpedo boats of the Royal Yugoslav Navy",
"Torpedo boats of the Soviet Navy",
"World War I torpedo boats of Austria-Hungary",
"World War II torpedo boats of Romania"
] |
The 250t class were high-seas torpedo boats built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy between 1913 and 1916. A total of 27 boats were built by three shipbuilding companies, with the letter after the boat number indicating the manufacturer. There were small variations between manufacturers, mainly in the steam turbines used, and whether they had one or two funnels. The eight boats of the T-group, designated 74 T – 81 T, were built by Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino, located at Trieste. The sixteen boats of the F-group, 82 F – 97 F, were built by Ganz-Danubius at their shipyards at Fiume and Porto Re. The three M-group boats, 98 M – 100 M, were manufactured by Cantiere Navale Triestino at Monfalcone.
All 27 boats saw service in World War I, undertaking anti-submarine operations in the Adriatic Sea, shore bombardment missions along its Italian coastline, and convoy, escort and minesweeping tasks. Although widely used during the war, the class suffered no losses, despite taking hits during surface engagements and damage from accidents. In 1917, one of the 66 mm (2.6 in) guns on each boat was placed on an anti-aircraft mount. Under the terms of the post-war Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the boats were transferred to various countries, including seven to Romania, six to Portugal, six to Greece, and eight to the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia). By 1940, thirteen boats of the class had been lost or scrapped, including all six Portuguese boats.
During World War II, the five remaining Greek boats were sunk by Axis aircraft during the German-led invasion of Greece in April 1941. One Romanian boat was lost during the war, while the two remaining Romanian boats performed escort tasks in the Black Sea before being taken over by the Soviet Navy, and serving in the Black Sea Fleet until the end of the war; they were finally stricken in late 1945.
The six surviving Yugoslav boats were captured by the Italians during the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, and were operated by the Regia Marina in a coastal and second-line escort role. Immediately following the Italian capitulation in September 1943, one ex-Yugoslav boat was sunk by German aircraft, another was scuttled by its Italian crew, and two more fell back into Yugoslav hands a few months later. The remaining two were seized by the Germans. Of the two ex-Yugoslav boats taken over by the Germans, both were operated by Croatian crews or by the Navy of the Independent State of Croatia for some time before being recovered by the Germans. One was destroyed by Royal Navy Motor Torpedo Boats in June 1944, and the other was sunk by Royal Air Force aircraft in 1945. The two surviving boats were commissioned by the Yugoslav Navy after the war, one continuing in service until the early 1960s.
## Background
In 1910, the Austria-Hungary Naval Technical Committee initiated the design and development of a 275-tonne (271-long-ton) coastal torpedo boat, specifying that it should be capable of sustaining 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph) for 10 hours. This specification was based on an expectation that in a future conflict, the Strait of Otranto, where the Adriatic Sea meets the Ionian Sea, would be blockaded by hostile forces. In such circumstances, there would be a need for a torpedo boat that could sail from the southern Adriatic Austro-Hungarian Navy base at the Bocche di Cattaro (the modern day Bay of Kotor in Montenegro) to the Strait during darkness, locate and attack blockading ships, and return to port before morning. Steam turbine power was selected for propulsion, as diesels with the necessary power were not available, and the Austro-Hungarian Navy did not have the practical experience to run turbo-electric boats.
## Description and construction
Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino (STT) of Trieste was selected for the contract to build eight vessels, ahead of one other tenderer. Despite the specifications of the contract being very close to the requirements for the coastal torpedo boat, the STT boats were classified as sea-going. The STT boats used Parsons turbines driving two propeller shafts. Another tender was requested for four more boats, but when Ganz-Danubius reduced their price by ten percent, a total of sixteen boats were ordered from them. These boats were powered by AEG-Curtiss turbines, and had two funnels rather than the single funnel of the STT boats. The third contract went to Cantiere Navale Triestino (CNT), who used Melms-Pfenniger turbines, and their boats also had two funnels. The boats of all three groups used steam generated by two Yarrow water-tube boilers, one of which burned fuel oil and the other coal.
When completed, all 27 boats were armed with two Škoda 66 mm (2.6 in) L/30 guns, and four 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes. Each vessel could carry 10–12 naval mines.
### T-group
The T-group were built by STT at the Port of Trieste between April 1913 and December 1914. They had a waterline length of 58.2 m (190 ft 11 in), a beam of 5.7 m (18 ft 8 in), and a normal draught of 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in). While their designed displacement was 262 tonnes (258 long tons), they displaced about 320 tonnes (310 long tons) fully loaded. The crew consisted of 39 officers and enlisted men. Their Parsons turbines were rated at 5,000 shp (3,700 kW) with a maximum output of 6,000 shp (4,500 kW) and the boats were designed to reach a top speed of 28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph). They carried 18 tonnes (17.7 long tons) of coal and 24 tonnes (23.6 long tons) of fuel oil, which gave them a range of 980 nmi (1,810 km; 1,130 mi) at 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph).
The T-group boats were originally to be armed with three 66 mm (2.6 in) L/30 guns, and three 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes, but this was changed to two guns and four torpedo tubes before the first boat was completed, to standardise the armament with the following F-group. In 1914, one 8 mm (0.31 in) machine gun was added.
When 74 T's turbines were initially installed, the problems with them were so significant that all her power and propulsion machinery had to be rebuilt. She was launched for a second time on 26 June 1914.
### F-group
The F-group were built by Ganz & Danubius at Fiume and nearby Porto Re between October 1913 and December 1916. They had a waterline length of 58.5 m (191 ft 11 in), a beam of 5.8 m (19 ft 0 in), and a normal draught of 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in). While their designed displacement was 266 tonnes (262 long tons), they displaced about 330 tonnes (320 long tons) fully loaded. The crew consisted of 38 officers and enlisted men. Their AEG-Curtiss turbines were rated at 5,000 shp (3,700 kW) with a maximum output of 6,000 shp (4,500 kW), and the boats were designed to reach a top speed of 28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph). During trials, 93 F produced 6,450 shp (4,810 kW), and reached a top speed of 29.7 knots (55.0 km/h; 34.2 mph). They carried 20 long tons (20.3 t) of coal and 34 long tons (34.5 t) of fuel oil, which gave them a range of 1,200 nmi (2,200 km; 1,400 mi) at 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph).
When Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in May 1915, five incomplete F-group boats were towed to be completed in safety. 82 F, 83 F and 84 F were taken from Porto Re to Pola, and 90 F and 91 F were taken to Novigrad. This resulted in delays to the completion of these boats.
### M-group
The M-group were built by CNT at Monfalcone between March 1914 and March 1916. They had a waterline length of 60.5 m (198 ft 6 in), a beam of 5.6 m (18 ft 4 in), and a normal draught of 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in). Their designed displacement was 270 tonnes (266 long tons), and they displaced about 330 tonnes (320 long tons) fully loaded. The crew consisted of 38 officers and enlisted men. Their Melms-Pfenniger turbines were rated at 5,000 shp (3,700 kW) with a maximum output of 6,000 shp (4,500 kW), and the boats were designed to reach a top speed of 28.5 knots (52.8 km/h; 32.8 mph). They carried enough coal and fuel oil to give them a range of 1,200 nmi (2,200 km; 1,400 mi) at 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph).
## Service history
### World War I
All 27 boats saw service, performing convoy, escort and minesweeping tasks, anti-submarine operations, and shore bombardment missions. They also conducted patrols and supported seaplane raids against the Italian coast. Due to inadequate funding, the 250t class were essentially coastal vessels, despite the original intention that they would be used for "high seas" operations.
#### 1914
At the outbreak of World War I, 74 T – 77 T comprised the 1st Torpedo Group of the 3rd Torpedo Division of the Austro-Hungarian 1st Torpedo Flotilla, which was led by the scout cruiser Saida commanded by Linienschiffskapitän (Captain) Heinrich Seitz, and supported by the mother ship Gäa. The concept of operation for the 250t-class boats was that they would sail in a flotilla at the rear of a cruising battle formation, and were to intervene in fighting only if the battleships around which the formation was established were disabled, or in order to attack damaged enemy battleships. When a torpedo attack was ordered, it was to be led by a scout cruiser, supported by two destroyers to repel any enemy torpedo boats. A group of four to six torpedo boats would deliver the attack under the direction of the flotilla commander.
In early September 1914, intelligence was received by the Austro-Hungarian command that an Italian volunteer corps were planning to land on the Dalmatian or Istrian coast, and the 1st and 2nd Torpedo Flotillas were involved fruitless patrolling off Sebenico and Zara, and Istria, respectively, between 19 and 24 September. It appears that this was French disinformation intended to keep the Austro-Hungarian fleet engaged while they conducted operations in the southern Adriatic. On the evening of 3 November, the 1st Torpedo Flotilla left Sebenico to make a night torpedo attack on the French fleet, which had begun its seventh raid on the Adriatic on 31 October, but by the time they reached the threatened areas, the French had withdrawn as they were running low on coal.
#### 1915
Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on the afternoon of 23 May 1915, and almost the entire Austro-Hungarian fleet left Pola soon after to deliver an immediate response against Italian cities and towns along the Adriatic coast, aiming to interdict land and sea transport between southern Italy and the northern regions of that country which were expected to be a theatre of land operations. The fleet split into six groups with a range of targets up and down the coast. Group A included three dreadnought battleships, six pre-dreadnought battleships, and four destroyers, accompanied by 74 T – 77 T and 83 F, fourteen Kaiman-class torpedo boats and six seaplanes, and participated in the Bombardment of Ancona, a shore bombardment operation against the northern Adriatic coast of Italy. The bombardment began at 04:04 on 24 May, and caused significant damage in the shipyard, killing 68, 30 of them military personnel, and wounding 150. The destroyers entered the harbour and launched several torpedoes, sinking one steam ship and damaging two others. Group A withdrew after 05:00 when news was received of Italian submarines leaving Venice en route to Pola. Group E, formed by the light cruiser Novara, a destroyer and 78 T – 81 T, was involved in the shelling of Porto Corsini near Ravenna. In the latter action, an Italian 120 mm (4.7 in) shore battery returned fire, hitting Novara, killing six and wounding ten, and also damaging 80 T, which had not entered the harbour. 81 T joined Novara in shelling the semaphore station and a lighthouse, and then engaged in the duel with the coastal artillery.
The 250t-class torpedo boats continued to be involved in shore bombardment operations. On 23 July, 77 T and 78 T participated in such a mission led by the scout cruiser Helgoland against Ortona on the central Adriatic coast of Italy. Four days later, the scout cruiser Admiral Spaun, Novara, two destroyers and 75 T, 76 T and 79 T shelled the railway line between Ancona and Pesaro while seaplanes bombed Ancona.
On 28 July, 80 T and 81 T were part of the first major attempt to land on the Italian-occupied island of Pelagosa in the mid-Adriatic. Led by Saida and Helgoland, the six Tatra-class destroyers and two torpedo boats bombarded the island, then landed 108 officers and sailors. The 90-man Italian naval garrison – the size and strength of which had been underestimated by the attacking force – defended bravely, and after two hours the Austro-Hungarian force withdrew, having suffered two killed and ten wounded. Only two Italians were wounded. The 1st Torpedo Flotilla, comprising Saida and Helgoland, five destroyers and five torpedo boats, again attacked Pelagosa on 17 August. 74 T, 77 T and 78 T conducted anti-submarine patrols south of the island along with two destroyers. The bombardment was successful, and managed to destroy defences, a large quantity of supplies, and crucially, the water cistern. This was the final straw for the Italians, who abandoned the island the following day.
In late November 1915, the Austro-Hungarian fleet deployed a force from its main fleet base at Pola to the Bocche; this force included six of the T-group torpedo boats. This force was tasked to maintain a permanent patrol of the Albanian coastline and interdict any troop transports crossing from Italy. A seaplane attack on Ancona on 9 December was supported by 79 T, 85 F and 87 F, accompanying the protected cruiser Szigetvár, two destroyers and two Kaiman-class torpedo boats. Another seaplane attack, this time on Rimini on 14 December, was supported by 83 F, 87 F and 89 F, along with Szigetvár, two destroyers and two Kaiman-class torpedo boats. After an attack on Durazzo in Albania on 30 December in which two Austro-Hungarian destroyers were sunk after straying out of a cleared lane through a minefield, 74 T, 77 T, 78 T, 80 T and 81 T were sent south with Novara, in order to strengthen morale and try to prevent the transfer of the captured crew of one of the destroyers to Italy. No Italian ships were encountered, and the group returned to the Bocche the following day.
#### 1916
On 3 February 1916, 83 F, 87 F and 88 F were involved in another shore bombardment operation against targets near San Vito Chietino and the railway line between Ortona and Tollo, this time led by the armoured cruiser Sankt Georg accompanied by Helgoland and the Huszár-class destroyer Wildfang. This bombardment was conducted as part of the transfer of these ships between Pola and the Bocche, and included an artillery duel between Sankt Georg and an Italian armed train equipped with 4.7 in guns manned by naval personnel. Three days later, Wildfang was south of the Bocche awaiting the return of seaplanes from a mission when the British light cruiser HMS Liverpool and the Italian Rosolino Pilo-class destroyer Pilade Bronzetti appeared. Wildfang engaged in a short exchange of fire under the protection of coastal guns and withdrew. In response to the arrival of Liverpool and Pilade Bronzetti, Helgoland, 74 T, 78 T, 80 T, 83 F, 87 F and 88 F sailed, but they were met by another British light cruiser, HMS Weymouth, and the French destroyer Bouclier, that had relieved Liverpool and Pilade Bronzetti in the intervening period. The Austro-Hungarian torpedo boats, split into two groups, launched torpedo attacks on the new Allied formation, but the only damage was caused by a collision between 74 T and 83 F. The group led by 74 T withdrew to Budua after the collision, but the other group attacked, scoring no hits. Finally, the Austro-Hungarian ships withdrew to the Bocche, having achieved little, and missed opportunities to attack enemy vessels operating further south.
On 22 February, 76 T, 77 T and 83 F, accompanied by a Kaiman-class torpedo boat, laid a minefield outside Antivari harbour. With Austro-Hungarian forces closing on Durazzo from the land, the Allies began to evacuate by sea, and Austro-Hungarian naval forces were sent to attempt to interdict. On 24 February, Helgoland, four destroyers, 77 T, 78 T, 80 T, 83 T, 83 F and 88 F were sent to intercept four Italian destroyers covering the evacuation, but were unable to locate them.
On 3 May, 76 T, 92 F, 93 F and 98 M – 100 M were accompanying four destroyers supporting the return of seaplanes that had attacked Ravenna and Porto Corsini when they were involved in a surface action off Porto Corsini against an Italian force consisting of the flotilla leaders Cesare Rossarol and Guglielmo Pepe, and the destroyers Francesco Nullo and Giuseppe Missori. According to the naval historians Enrico Cernuschi and Vincent P. O'Hara, the Austro-Hungarian force retreated behind a minefield with no damage to the torpedo boats, and only splinter damage to the Huszár-class destroyer Csikós. However, a more recent work by the naval historian Zvonimir Freivogel disputes the latter assertion, saying that none of the vessels on either side were damaged.
On 24 May, the Allies were anticipating a significant Austro-Hungarian attack from the sea to mark the first anniversary of the Italians entering the war, and a two Allied cruisers and six destroyers were despatched to patrol the area between the Bocche and Brindisi. An Austro-Hungarian force consisting of four destroyers, 75 T, 89 F, 92 F, and 98 M – 100 M was at sea supporting the return of eleven seaplanes that had been sent to attack Padua. Due to fog, only one of the aircraft had been able to identify and drop bombs on a target there, but on the return trip, one of the aircraft mistakenly dropped three bombs on 92 F, luckily missing the target. The same aircraft strafed 100 M with its machine gun. Two torpedo boats from the Italian force, 21 OS and 22 OS engaged in a brief exchange of fire with 75 T. During the action, 75 T was hit. On the night of 31 May – 1 June 1916, the Tátra-class destroyers Orjen and Balaton, accompanied by 77 T, 79 T and 81 T were sent to engage sea traffic across the Strait of Otranto in the area of the Allied naval blockade. Near Fasano, they raided the Otranto Barrage, and Orjen engaged in a gunnery duel with the British drifter Beneficent then sank her with a torpedo, but once the alarm had been raised, the Austro-Hungarian force withdrew. Only one sailor from Beneficent survived.
The Italian destroyer Zeffiro, accompanied by two torpedo boats, entered Parenzo in Istria on 12 June, covered by two groups of destroyers, with the aim of destroying the seaplane base within the harbour. Coastal batteries and guns at the seaplane station opened fire almost immediately, and three seaplanes took off and began attacking the invaders. In the exchange of fire, Zeffiro was damaged and the Italians had to retire, pursued by 93 F, 98 M and 99 M. On 3 July, 83 F, 85 F, 87 F accompanied Helgoland and three destroyers in a fruitless raid on the Otranto Barrage.
On 9 July, Novara led a force which included 87 F and two Kaiman-class torpedo boats in another night raid on the Otranto Barrage which resulted in the sinking of two drifters. The following day, 75 T exchanged fire with four enemy warships. On 31 July, the Italian submarine Giacinto Pullino stranded on rocks in the Bay of Fiume. The Austro-Hungarians attempted to salvage her, but she sank while under tow. One of the ships involved in her attempted salvage was 50 E, which was unsuccessfully attacked by the Italian submarine Argo during the operation. On the night of 1/2 August, the Huszár-class destroyers Warasdiner and Wildfang conducted a shore bombardment of Molfetta on the southern Adriatic coast of Italy, covered by the cruiser Aspern, 80 T and 85 F. On the return trip they exchanged fire at extreme range with four Italian destroyers that were trying to intercept them. A further group of Allied vessels led by the Italian protected cruiser Nino Bixio and HMS Liverpool, accompanied by four destroyers and six torpedo boats. The Austro-Hungarian submarine SM U-4 unsuccessfully engaged Nino Bixio, and the Austro-Hungarian force withdrew before the cruisers closed to gun range.
91 F, 94 F and 98 M were chased and engaged by Italian torpedo boats off Pola on 11 August, resulting in splinter damage to one of the Italian boats. The Austro-Hungarians sent a large force of four cruisers and five destroyers, accompanied by 83 F, 85 F, 87 F and 88 F, to sail off the Italian coast on 28 August, hoping to draw the Allied fleet into a trap formed by four submarines, but fog meant they were not seen, and no engagements resulted. On 15 September, in a first in naval warfare, the submerged French submarine Foucault was sunk by Austro-Hungarian aircraft near the Bocche. The seaplanes landed and captured the entire crew of 27, holding them until 100 M arrived and took them on board. 87 F, 99 M and 100 M conducted a fruitless raid on the Otranto Barrage on the night of 4/5 October. On 4 November, three Italian destroyers and three torpedo boats were involved in a brief encounter in the northern Adriatic with two Austro-Hungarian destroyers accompanied by 83 F, 87 F and 88 F. On the following day, 83 F, 87 F and 88 F conducted a shore bombardment of Sant'Elpidio a Mare.
#### 1917
At the beginning of 1917, the 1st Torpedo Flotilla, consisting of Helgoland, four Tatra-class destroyers and the 250t-class torpedo boats, was based out of the Bocche. During 1917, one of the 66 mm (2.6 in) guns on each boat was placed on an anti-aircraft mount. On the night of 21/22 April, 84 F, 92 F, 94 F and 100 M conducted a night raid on the Otranto Barrage, sinking the freighter Japigia. On 11 May, the British submarine H1 stalked 78 T off Pola, firing two torpedoes at her. The British captain had kept his submarine's periscope extended too far and for too long, and the tell-tale "feather" alerted the crew of 78 T, allowing her to avoid the incoming torpedoes. That night, the destroyer Csikós, accompanied by 78 T, 93 F and 96 F, were pursued in the northern Adriatic by an Italian force of five destroyers, but were able to retire to safety behind a minefield.
On 14–15 May 1917, several 250t-class boats were part of the support forces for a major raid on the Otranto Barrage. When the raiding force departed, torpedo boats and aircraft secured the approaches to the Austro-Hungarian naval base at the Bocche. Once the raiding force had departed for the barrage, Sankt Georg, a destroyer, and 84 F, 88 F, 99 M and 100 M were to be prepared to sortie out to support the raiders on their return voyage. The old coastal defence ship Budapest and 86 F, 91 F and 95 F were also available at the Bocche if needed. Although the raid was a relative success, sinking 14 drifters, the raiding force was then engaged by Allied ships in the Battle of the Otranto Straits. Both support groups sailed to meet the returning Austro-Hungarian force, which included the heavily damaged Novara under tow. On marrying-up with the raiding force, the torpedo boats fanned out to screen the larger warships, protecting them as they returned to port. On 21 May 1917, the suffix of all Austro-Hungarian torpedo boats was removed, and thereafter they were referred to only by the numeral. On 24 May, 89 and the Cobra-class torpedo boat 16 were escorting the German minelaying submarines UC-24 and UC-74 into the Adriatic from the Bocche when UC-24 was torpedoed and sunk by the French submarine Circé. Only two crew members were rescued.
On 3 June, the destroyers Wildfang and Csikós, along with 93 and 96, briefly encountered three Italian MAS boats off the mouth of the Tagliamento river in the far north of the Adriatic. This group, with the addition of the destroyer Velebit, was supporting an attack by six seaplanes on the Italian coast that night when Wildfang struck a mine about 30 nmi (56 km; 35 mi) southwest of Cape Penada on the island of Veliki Brijun off Istria. She sank in ten minutes, and 25 of the crew drowned, with 74 rescued. During the July build-up to the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo, there were several seaplane attacks on the coastal areas of the Italian front in the northern Adriatic which were supported by the Austro-Hungarian fleet. During one of these, an attack on Grado and Cervignano del Friuli by 21 aircraft, cover was provided by 76, 80, 92 and 96 along with three destroyers.
On 23 September, 77 and 78 were laying a minefield off Grado in the northern Adriatic when they had a brief encounter with an Italian MAS boat. The following night, 94, 95 and two other torpedo boats again had a short and inconclusive engagement with Italian torpedo boats in the northern Adriatic. On 29 September, 90, 94, 98 and 99 were accompanying a squadron of four destroyers supporting an air attack on the Italian airfield at Ferrara by flying boats. After destroying an Italian airship, the squadron withdrew at high speed in the darkness, but was intercepted by an Italian squadron of eight destroyers that had been sent from Venice to support an Italian air raid on Pola. In the resultant 45 minute chase towards Parenzo, two Italian destroyers and three Austro-Hungarian destroyers were damaged, and 94 was hit by splinters. As the squadron retreated through the minefields off Parenzo, 98 was also hit by Italian fire, resulting in one casualty.
Two sorties involving boats of the class were conducted on 18 October. In the south, 82, 91, 92 and 94 and five seaplanes acted as scouts for a raid led by Helgoland accompanied by six destroyers, and further north and later in the day, 82, 87, 91, 92, 94 and 95 were part of an escort for a convoy running supplies to Pirano destined for the troops on the Italian Front.
On 14 November, 84, 92, 94, 99 and 100 encountered four Italian destroyers off the mouth of the Piave, but the torpedo boats were again able to elude their pursuers by sailing behind a minefield. Two days later, the coastal defence ships Wien and Budapest sailed to engage a 152 mm (6.0 in) Italian shore battery at Cortellazzo near the mouth of the Piave, with an escort that included 84, 92, 94, 98 – 100 and some minesweepers. Both Wien and Budapest were hit, but none of the torpedo boats suffered any damage. After an Italian force of seven destroyers and three MAS boats appeared, the bombarding force withdrew. On 28 November, 250t-class boats were involved in two shore bombardment missions. In the first mission, 79, 86 and 90 supported the bombardment of Senigallia by three destroyers, before they were joined by 78, 82, 87, 89 and 95 and another three destroyers for the bombardment of Porto Corsini, Marotta and Cesenatico. On 19 December, a large Austro-Hungarian force engaged the Italian shore battery at Cortellazzo. The force consisted of the pre-dreadnought Árpád, Admiral Spaun, Budapest, six destroyers, ten torpedo boats including 84, 92, 94 and 98 – 100, and ten minesweepers. None of the ships of the bombarding force suffered damage during the mission.
#### 1918
Elements of the Austro-Hungarian fleet mutinied in the Bocche di Cattaro in February 1918, and in May, a plot was discovered to take over 80 at Pola. The motive appeared to be nationalism. Two of the ringleaders, a Czech and a Dalmatian Croat, were tried, convicted and executed by firing squad. On 13 May, the destroyer Dukla, 84 and 98 were at Durazzo when two Italian MAS boats forced the harbour, sinking one Austro-Hungarian freighter. On 10 June, 76 – 79, 81 and 87 were part of the escort force that failed to protect the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought Szent István from the Italian MAS boats that sank her. During that action, 76 fired at the Italian boats, but did not score a hit. On 1 July, the destroyers Balaton and Csikós, along with 83 and 88, were chased offshore from Caorle by seven Italian destroyers. All four Austro-Hungarian ships were hit, with 83 hit three times, and 88 struck once. One of the Italian destroyers was hit three times, and another was slightly damaged by splinters. On 6 September, 86 and two other torpedo boats were engaged by three Italian destroyers in the Gulf of Drin. 86 was hit, and the Austro-Hungarian force withdrew. On 2 October, 87 was at Durazzo when the port was bombarded by a multinational Allied naval force. She escaped with minor damage, in what was the last major action involving the Austro-Hungarian Navy.
### Post-World War I transfers
Under the provisions of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, all Austro-Hungarian warships were surrendered to the Allies. The 250t-class torpedo boats were distributed among Romania, Portugal, Greece, and the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), as follows:
### World War II
By 1940, thirteen boats of the class had been lost or scrapped, including all six Portuguese boats. At the time of the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Yugoslav boats T1 and T3 were assigned to the Southern Sector of Coastal Defence Command based at the Bay of Kotor, along with several minesweepers and other craft. T5–T8 comprised the 3rd Torpedo Division located at Šibenik. On 8 April, the four boats of the 3rd Torpedo Division, along with other vessels, were tasked to support an attack on the Italian enclave of Zara on the Dalmatian coast. They were subjected to three Italian air attacks and, after the last one, sailed from the area of Zaton into Lake Prokljan, where they remained until 11 April. On 12 April, the 3rd Torpedo Division arrived at Milna on the island of Brač, and refused to follow orders to sail to the Bay of Kotor. All six Yugoslav boats were then captured by the Italians.
The five surviving Greek boats were all sunk by aircraft during the German invasion of Greece, also in April 1941. The first was Proussa, which was sunk off Corfu on 4 April by Italian Junkers Ju 87 "Picchiatellos" of the 239th Squadron, 97th Dive Bomber Group. Later, Kios was sunk off Athens on 22 April, Kyzikos at Salamis on 24 April, Pergamos off Salamis on 25 April, and Kydoniai south of the Peloponnese peninsula on the following day, all by German aircraft.
The three Romanian boats were initially deployed against the Soviet Navy Black Sea Fleet following the launch of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. Năluca took part in the sinking of one Soviet submarine near Mangalia on 9 July 1941, but was herself sunk by Soviet aircraft at Constanța on 20 August 1944. Sborul and Smeul survived World War II, having been transferred to the Soviet Black Sea Fleet in late August 1944 after Romania changed sides and joined the Allies, serving as Musson and Toros respectively.
The Yugoslav boats served in a coastal and second-line escort role with the Royal Italian Navy (Italian: Regia Marina) in the Adriatic under their Yugoslav designations, and were fitted with two 76 mm (3.0 in) L/30 anti-aircraft guns in place of their 66 mm guns, but no other significant alterations were made to them. After the Italians capitulated in September 1943, they transferred T1 back to the KJRM-in-exile in December of that year. T3 was seized by the Germans at Rijeka on 16 September 1943 and was renamed TA48. She was commissioned on 15 August 1944, and was used for patrol and escort work in the northern Adriatic. The Germans added to her armament, fitting her with two single 20 mm (0.79 in) anti-aircraft guns in addition to the guns fitted by the Italians, and removing two of her torpedo tubes. There are two versions of how TA48 was employed. The first version indicates that she was crewed exclusively by Croatian officers and sailors, but remained under German control, and the second states that she was handed over to the Navy of the Independent State of Croatia, but was repossessed by the Germans on 14 December 1944 because they considered the Croatians unreliable. Her complement was also increased to 52 during her German-Croatian service. She was sunk in the port of Trieste by Allied aircraft on 20 February 1945.
T5 was also returned to the KJRM-in-exile in December 1943. T6 was scuttled by the Italians 30 km (19 mi) north of Rimini on 11 September as she had insufficient fuel on board to reach an Allied port. Once under German control, T7 was also handed over to the Navy of the Independent State of Croatia, and served under her Yugoslav designation. Her crew came under the influence of Yugoslav Partisan propaganda, and were preparing to mutiny when the Germans intervened. On 24 June 1944, she and the S-boats S 154 and S 157 of the 7th S-Boat Flotilla were sailing between Šibenik and Rijeka, protecting German sea supply routes along the Adriatic, when they were attacked by the Royal Navy Fairmile D motor torpedo boats MTB 659, MTB 662 and MTB 670 near the island of Kukuljari, south of Murter Island. The MTBs fired two torpedoes at T7, but missed, so they closed and engaged her with their guns, setting her ablaze. She was beached, and 21 crew were rescued by the MTBs. The British crews later examined the wreck, capturing five more crew, then destroyed her with demolition charges. T8 was sunk 37 km (23 mi) north-west of Dubrovnik by German aircraft while evacuating Italian troops from Dalmatia on 10 or 11 September 1943.
### Post-World War II
Only four of the twenty-seven 250t-class torpedo boats survived World War II, two in Yugoslav service and two in Soviet service. T1 was commissioned by the Yugoslav Navy after the war as Golešnica. She was re-armed with two 40 mm (1.6 in) guns on single mounts and four 20 mm (0.79 in) guns, and her torpedo tubes were removed. She continued in Yugoslav service under that name until October 1959. T5 was also commissioned by the Yugoslav Navy after the war, and renamed Cer. She was fitted with two 40 mm (1.6 in) guns on single mounts and one 20 mm (0.79 in) gun, and her torpedo tubes were also removed. She served until 1962, when she was broken up. Musson and Toros were returned to Romania in October 1945, and stricken the following month.
|
20,128,213 |
The Hunger Games (novel)
| 1,173,486,237 |
2008 dystopian novel by Suzanne Collins
|
[
"2008 American novels",
"2008 science fiction novels",
"American adventure novels",
"American novels adapted into films",
"American post-apocalyptic novels",
"American young adult novels",
"Books by Suzanne Collins",
"Children's science fiction novels",
"Dystopian novels",
"Novels set in North America",
"Scholastic Corporation books",
"Science fiction novels adapted into films",
"Sports fiction",
"The Hunger Games"
] |
The Hunger Games is a 2008 dystopian novel by the American writer Suzanne Collins. It is written in the perspective of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in the future, post-apocalyptic nation of Panem in North America. The Capitol, a highly advanced metropolis, exercises political control over the rest of the nation. The Hunger Games is an annual event in which one boy and one girl aged 12–18 from each of the twelve districts surrounding the Capitol are selected by lottery to compete in a televised battle royale to the death.
The book received critical acclaim from major reviewers and authors. It was praised for its plot and character development. In writing The Hunger Games, Collins drew upon Greek mythology, Roman gladiatorial games, and contemporary reality television for thematic content. The novel won many awards, including the California Young Reader Medal, and was named one of Publishers Weekly's "Best Books of the Year" in 2008.
The Hunger Games was first published in hardcover on September 14, 2008, by Scholastic, featuring a cover designed by Tim O'Brien. It has since been released in paperback and also as an audiobook and ebook. After an initial print of 200,000, the book had sold 800,000 copies by February 2010. Since its release, The Hunger Games has been translated into 26 languages, and publishing rights have been sold in 38 territories. The novel is the first in The Hunger Games trilogy, followed by Catching Fire (2009) and Mockingjay (2010). A film adaptation, directed by Gary Ross and co-written and co-produced by Collins herself, was released in 2012.
## Background
Collins has said that the inspiration for The Hunger Games came from channel surfing on television. On one channel she observed people competing on a reality show and on another she saw footage of the invasion of Iraq. The two "began to blur in this very unsettling way" and the idea for the book was formed. The Greek myth of Theseus served as a major basis for the story, with Collins describing Katniss as a futuristic Theseus, and Roman gladiatorial games provided the framework. The sense of loss that Collins developed through her father's service in the Vietnam War was also an influence on the story, with Katniss having lost her father at age 11, five years before the story begins. Collins stated that the deaths of young characters and other "dark passages" were the most difficult parts of the book to write, but that she had accepted that passages such as these were necessary to the story. She considered the moments where Katniss reflects on happier moments in her past to be more enjoyable.
## Plot
In the nation of Panem, established in the remains of North America after an apocalyptic event, the wealthy Capitol, which is west of the Rocky Mountains, exploits the twelve surrounding districts for their natural resources and labor. As punishment for a past failed rebellion against the Capitol, which resulted in the obliteration of District 13, one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 from each of the remaining districts are selected by an annual lottery to participate in the Hunger Games, a contest in which the "tributes" must fight to the death in an outdoor arena until only one remains.
16-year-old Katniss Everdeen from District 12, in the coal-rich region that was once Appalachia, volunteers for the 74th Hunger Games in place of her 12-year-old sister, Primrose. The male tribute is Peeta Mellark, a former schoolmate of Katniss who once gave her bread from his family's bakery when her family was starving. In the days leading up to the Games in the Capitol, they are advised by their drunken mentor, Haymitch Abernathy, the sole living District 12 victor of the Hunger Games; chaperone Effie Trinket; and various stylists to enhance their public perception to get potential sponsors, who will send potentially life-saving gifts during the Games. Katniss's stylist, Cinna, designs costumes for Katniss and Peeta that set them apart from the tributes when introduced to the public. Due to Katniss’s fire-themed dress, she becomes known as the “Girl on Fire”. During their evaluation by the Gamemakers, Katniss gets the highest score among the tributes. Meanwhile, Rue, the petite 12-year-old girl tribute from District 11, follows Katniss and Peeta around during the training sessions. On the day before the games, in the televised interview with Caesar Flickerman, Peeta reveals his long-unrequited love for Katniss; she is initially shocked by this and believes this is a ploy to gain sponsors, but later accepts this as sincere. Haymitch promotes their image as "star-crossed lovers".
The Games begin, and nearly half the tributes are killed at the start whilst fighting over the weapons and supplies throughout the arena. Katniss disregards Haymitch's earlier advice to flee immediately and nearly dies but uses her well-practiced hunting and survival skills to hide in the woods. After a few days, an artificial fire drives Katniss toward the others. She is spotted and chased up a tree by the "Career tributes" from Districts 1, 2, and 4, and Peeta, who seems to have allied with them. Rue, hiding in a nearby tree, silently alerts Katniss to a “tracker jacker” nest. Katniss cuts it down, releasing the flying insects, which are genetically modified to track whoever disturbs their nest and have venom that targets the section of their victims’ minds that houses fear. Their venom kills two of the Careers and drives the others away, but Katniss is stung and begins hallucinating. Peeta returns, but instead of killing her, tells her to run away. Katniss later allies with Rue, who is fatally wounded by a tribute from District 1 while Katniss destroys the careers' supplies. Katniss kills Rue's killer with an arrow and accompanies Rue as she dies. She spreads flowers over Rue's body to show her defiance against the Capitol. In gratitude, Rue's district sends Katniss a loaf of bread.
A rule change is announced, allowing the tributes from the same district to win as a pair. Katniss finds Peeta (who only allied with the Careers to protect Katniss) camouflaged into a river bank, having been injured by Cato, one of the Careers. She nurses Peeta back to health as best she can, but he is still gravely injured. Katniss pretends to be madly in love with Peeta in an attempt to gain gifts from sponsors. When the Gamemakers send a delivery of what each contestant needs most, Katniss risks her life to obtain medicine for Peeta. She is intercepted by Career Tribute Clove, who gloats over Rue's death and tries to kill Katniss, but is killed by Thresh, the male District 11 tribute, who spares Katniss for Rue's sake. The medicine saves Peeta's life.
Once Katniss and Peeta become the last two survivors, the Gamemakers revoke the rule change to force one to kill the other for a dramatic finale. In defiance, Katniss prepares to consume poisonous "nightlock" berries with Peeta. Realizing they intend to commit suicide so that there will not be a victor for the games, the Gamemakers declare Katniss and Peeta the victors. Although both of them receive a hero's welcome as a couple, Katniss is warned by Haymitch that the Capitol may take action against her for her defiance. Along the way back to District 12, Peeta is heartbroken to learn that Katniss's actions were part of a calculated ploy to gain sympathy. Katniss, however, is unsure of her own feelings and her future.
## Themes
In an interview with Collins, it was noted that the novel "tackles issues like severe poverty, starvation, oppression, and the effects of war among others." The novel deals with the struggle for self-preservation that the people of Panem face in their districts and the Hunger Games in which they must participate. The citizens' starvation and their need for resources, both in and outside of the arena, create an atmosphere of helplessness that the main characters try to overcome in their fight for survival. Katniss needs to hunt to provide food for her family, resulting in the development of skills that are useful to her in the Games (such as her proficiency with the bow and arrow), and represents her rejection of the Capitol's rules in the face of life-threatening situations. On the subject of the Games' parallels with popular culture, Darren Franich of Entertainment Weekly writes that the book "is an incisive satire of reality television shows", and that the character of Cinna "almost seems like a contestant on a fascist version of Project Runway, using Katniss' outfits as a vehicle to express potentially dangerous ideas."
The choices the characters make and the strategies they use are often morally complex. The tributes build a personality they want the audience to see throughout the Games. Library journal Voice of Youth Advocates names the major themes of The Hunger Games as "government control, 'big brother', and personal independence." The trilogy's theme of power and downfall, similar to that of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, was pointed out by its publisher Scholastic. Laura Miller of The New Yorker finds the author's stated premise of the Games –an exercise in propaganda and a "humiliating as well as torturous [...] punishment" for a failed uprising against the Capitol many years earlier– to be unconvincing. "You don't demoralize and dehumanize a subject people by turning them into celebrities and coaching them on how to craft an appealing persona for a mass audience." But the story works much better if the theme is vicissitudes of high school and "the adolescent social experience". Miller writes:
> "The rules are arbitrary, unfathomable, and subject to sudden change. A brutal social hierarchy prevails, with the rich, the good-looking, and the athletic lording their advantages over everyone else. To survive you have to be totally fake. Adults don't seem to understand how high the stakes are; your whole life could be over, and they act like it's just some "phase"! Everyone's always watching you, scrutinizing your clothes or your friends and obsessing over whether you're having sex or taking drugs or getting good enough grades, but no one cares who you really are or how you really feel about anything."
Donald Brake from The Washington Times and pastor Andy Langford state that the story has Christian themes, such as that of self-sacrifice, which is found in Katniss' substitution for her younger sister, analogous to the sacrifice of Jesus as a substitute for the atonement of sins. Brake, as well as another reviewer, Amy Simpson, both find that the story also revolves around the theme of hope, which is exemplified in the "incorruptible goodness of Katniss' sister, Primrose." Simpson also points to events similar to the Passion of Jesus; in the Games, "Christ figure" Peeta Mellark is stabbed after warning Katniss to flee for her life, and is then buried in the ground and placed in a cave for three days before emerging with a new lease on life. Further, she finds that the Christian image of the Bread of Life is used throughout The Hunger Games; in the story, Peeta gives Katniss a loaf of bread, saving the girl and her family from starvation.
## Publication history
After writing the novel, Collins signed a six-figure deal for three books with Scholastic. First published as a hardcover in the United States on September 14, 2008, The Hunger Games had a first printing of 50,000 copies, which was bumped up twice to 200,000 copies. By February 2010, the book had sold 800,000 copies, and rights to the novel had been sold in 38 territories worldwide. A few months later, in July, the book was released in paperback. The Hunger Games entered the New York Times Best Seller list in November 2008, where it would feature for over 100 consecutive weeks. By the time the film adaptation of The Hunger Games was released in March 2012, the book had been on USA Today's best-sellers list for 135 consecutive weeks and has sold over 17.5 million copies.
The novel is the first in The Hunger Games trilogy; it is followed by sequels Catching Fire (2009) and Mockingjay (2010). In March 2012, during the time of The Hunger Games film's release, Scholastic reported 26 million Hunger Games trilogy books in print, including movie tie-in books. The Hunger Games (and its sequels) have sold exceptionally well in ebook format. Suzanne Collins is the first children's or young adult author to sell over one million Amazon Kindle ebooks, making her the sixth author to join the "Kindle Million Club". In March 2012, Amazon announced that Collins had become the best-selling Kindle ebook author of all time.
An audiobook version of The Hunger Games was released in December 2008. Read by the actress Carolyn McCormick, it has a total running time of eleven hours and fourteen minutes. The magazine AudioFile said: "Carolyn McCormick gives a detailed and attentive narration. However, she may rely too much on the strength of the prose without providing the drama young adult listeners often enjoy." School Library Journal also praised the audiobook, stating that "McCormick ably voices the action-packed sequences and Katniss's every fear and strength shines through, along with her doomed growing attraction to one of her fellow Tributes."
The Tim O'Brien-designed cover features a gold "mockingjay" – a fictional bird in The Hunger Games born by crossbreeding female mockingbirds and genetically engineered male "jabberjays" – with an arrow engraved in a circle. This is a depiction of the pin worn by Katniss into the arena, given to her by the District 12 mayor's daughter, Madge Undersee. The image matches the description of the pin that is given in the novel, except for the arrow: "It's as if someone fashioned a small golden bird and then attached a ring around it. The bird is connected to the ring only by its wing tips."
## Critical reception
The Hunger Games has received critical acclaim. In a review for The New York Times, John Green wrote that the novel was "brilliantly plotted and perfectly paced", and that "the considerable strength of the novel comes in Collins's convincingly detailed world-building and her memorably complex and fascinating heroine." However, he also noted that, while allegorically rich, the book sometimes does not realize the allegorical potential that the plot has to offer and that the writing "described the action and little else." Time magazine's review was also positive, stating that it "is a chilling, bloody and thoroughly horrifying book" and praising what it called the "hypnotic" quality of the violence. In Stephen King's review for Entertainment Weekly, he compared it to "shoot-it-if-it-moves videogames in the lobby of the local eightplex; you know it's not real, but you keep plugging in quarters anyway." However, he stated that there were "displays of authorial laziness that kids will accept more readily than adults" and that the love triangle was standard for the genre. He gave the book a B grade. Elizabeth Bird of School Library Journal praised the novel, saying it is "exciting, poignant, thoughtful, and breathtaking by turns", and called it one of the best books of 2008. Booklist also gave a positive review, praising the character violence and romance involved in the book. Kirkus Reviews gave a positive review, praising the action and world-building, but pointed out that "poor copyediting in the first printing will distract careful readers–a crying shame". Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, claims it is the "closest thing to a perfect adventure novel" he has ever read. Stephenie Meyer (author of the Twilight series) endorsed the book on her website, saying, "I was so obsessed with this book ... The Hunger Games is amazing."
The Hunger Games received many awards and honors. It was named one of Publishers Weekly's "Best Books of the Year" in 2008 and a New York Times "Notable Children's Book of 2008". It was the 2009 winner of the Golden Duck Award in the Young Adult Fiction Category. The Hunger Games was also a "2008 Cybil Winner" for fantasy and science-fiction books along with The Graveyard Book, one of School Library Journal's "Best Books 2008", and a "Booklist Editors' Choice" in 2008. In 2011, the book won the California Young Reader Medal. In the 2012 edition of Scholastic's Parent and Child magazine, The Hunger Games was listed as the 33rd-best book for children, with the award for "Most Exciting Ending". The novel is one of the top 5 best selling Kindle books of all time. However, the novel has also been controversial with parents; it ranked in fifth place on the American Library Association's list of frequently challenged books for 2010, with "unsuited to age group" and "violence" being among the reasons cited.
Similarities of The Hunger Games to Koushun Takami's 1999 novel Battle Royale have been noted. Collins stated that she "had never heard of that book or that author until my book was turned in. At that point, it was mentioned to me, and I asked my editor if I should read it. He said: 'No, I don't want that world in your head. Just continue with what you're doing'." Susan Dominus of The New York Times reports that "the parallels are striking enough that Collins's work has been savaged on the blogosphere as a baldfaced ripoff" of Battle Royale but argued that "there are enough possible sources for the plot line that the two authors might well have hit on the same basic setup independently." Stephen King noted that the reality TV "badlands" were similar to Battle Royale, as well as his own novels The Running Man and The Long Walk. The story has also been compared to the 1965 Italian cult film The 10th Victim by Elio Petri, based on Robert Sheckley's 1953 short story "Seventh Victim".
## Film adaptation
In March 2009, Lions Gate Entertainment entered into a co-production agreement for The Hunger Games with Nina Jacobson's production company Color Force, which had acquired worldwide distribution rights to the novel a few weeks earlier. The studio, which had not made a profit for five years, raided the budgets of other productions and sold assets to secure a budget of \$88,000,000 – one of its largest ever – for the film. Collins' agent Jason Dravis remarked that "they [Lionsgate] had everyone but the valet call us" to help secure the franchise. Intending the film to have a PG-13 rating, Collins adapted the novel for film herself, in collaboration with screenwriter Billy Ray and director Gary Ross. The screenplay remains extremely faithful to the original novel, with Ross saying he "felt the only way to make the film really successful was to be totally subjective" in its presentation of events, echoing Collins' use of first person present in the novel.
Twenty-year-old actress Jennifer Lawrence was chosen to play Katniss Everdeen. Though Lawrence was four years older than the character when filming began, Collins felt the role demanded "a certain maturity and power" and said she would rather the actress be older than younger. She added that Lawrence was the "only one who truly captured the character I wrote in the book" and that she had "every essential quality necessary to play Katniss." Lawrence, a fan of the books, took three days to accept the role, initially intimidated by the size of the production. Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth were later added to the cast, in the roles of Peeta and Gale, respectively. Production began in late spring 2011 and the film was released on March 23, 2012. The film's opening weekend brought in a non-sequel record \$152.5 million (USD) in North America. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, based on the second novel in the series, was released the following year on November 22, 2013. The third novel of the series, Mockingjay, would later be adapted to film as two parts, with Part 1 being released on November 21, 2014, and Part 2 being released on November 20, 2015.
## See also
- The Condemned
- Crypteia
- The Most Dangerous Game
- Series 7: The Contenders
- "The Lottery"
|
12,812,119 |
Farran Zerbe
| 1,170,508,630 |
American numismatist (1871–1949)
|
[
"1871 births",
"1949 deaths",
"American numismatists",
"American publishers (people)",
"People from Tyrone, Pennsylvania"
] |
Joseph Farran Zerbe (April 16, 1871 – December 25, 1949) was an American coin collector and dealer who was the president of the American Numismatic Association (ANA) in 1908 and 1909. He served as chief numismatist (person responsible for selling government coins) at the World's Fairs in St. Louis (1904), Portland (1905), and San Francisco (1915).
Zerbe was born in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, in 1871, and became interested in coins as a child. By the time he was 20, he was running a corner store in Tyrone, alongside involvement in other businesses. He joined the ANA in 1900, and thereafter made his living from coins. Accumulating a major collection of numismatic items, he exhibited them at the fairs and at local banks throughout the U.S. for over 20 years beginning in 1907. The high prices he charged for the commemorative coins issued by the U.S. Mint for the World's Fairs, as well as the fact that some of the coins sank in value after the fairs closed, earned him a reputation among some numismatists as a huckster.
Zerbe rose rapidly in the ANA, elected vice president in 1904 and subsequently president in 1907. His tenure as president proved controversial, as he purchased the privately owned journal of the ANA, The Numismatist, from the heirs of its founder in 1908, a transaction that some believed should have been on behalf of the association. A factional fight followed; Zerbe won, with his chosen successor elected. He continued to exhibit his collection at banks until selling it in 1928 to the Chase National Bank, and then served as its curator until his 1939 retirement. In 1969, he was posthumously inducted into the Numismatic Hall of Fame. The ANA's highest honor, the Farran Zerbe Memorial Award, has been awarded by the organization on an annual basis, though in 2021 the ANA Board of Governors voted to remove his name from the honor after that year's presentation. His other contributions to numismatics include the founding of the Pacific Coast Numismatic Society in San Francisco in 1915.
## Early life
Joseph Farran Zerbe was born on April 16, 1871, in Tyrone, Pennsylvania. His parents were James Albert, a messenger for an express company, and Bridget Mary Zerbe (). The Zerbe family was relatively comfortable, and Joseph (who dropped his first name while young) was educated in the public schools.
Farran Zerbe served as a newspaper delivery boy for the Tyrone Daily Herald from 1880 to 1889. By many accounts, including as told by Zerbe in his later years, his interest in coins was awakened when as an 11-year-old, a customer paid him with a silver French 50-centime piece, and the bank refused to accept it. Numismatist John P. Lupia III deemed this story more likely to be a lure to draw audiences (especially those who came to view his traveling exhibit of coins) into his story, and that it is more likely that the story Zerbe told in 1903 is true, that he became a collector of coins at age 9 in 1880.
By 1889, Zerbe had become the proprietor of a corner store in Tyrone, which sold a large variety of goods under the name "Zerbe Cycle Co." He also had involvement in other matters in Tyrone, running a news service under his own name from 1889 to 1890 and serving as editor of a local paper during the absence of the incumbent. He also sold collectible postage stamps, running a separate store. In 1899, under the name "Coin Zerbe", he published the pamphlet Nut Shell Facts on Coins, Stamps and Paper Money, which sold for 25 cents ().
## Numismatist of the World's Fairs
In July 1900, Zerbe joined the American Numismatic Association (ANA), as member no. 197. Numismatist O.H. Dodson noted, "Zerbe's inquiring mind and zest for numismatic lore were quickly noted", resulting in his 1904 election as an officer of the society. In September 1900, he declared bankruptcy, which probably marked the end of his involvement with the corner store in Tyrone. Thereafter, his life would be devoted to collectibles, especially coins. A prolific writer, Zerbe published his first article in the ANA's journal, The Numismatist, in 1902; titled "Slugs and Stellas", it discussed certain rare U.S. gold coins, and was the first of more than 100 pieces he would write for that publication between 1902 and 1945.
In the first years of the 20th century, Zerbe began to show his traveling exhibit, "Money of the World". Numismatic writer David T. Alexander described Zerbe as "an energetic, self-promoting figure whose overall demeanor suggested a carny grifter rather than a distinguished numismatist". Some collectors lent items for the exhibit and could not get them back, though this was given little publicity as Zerbe began a meteoric rise in the numismatic world.
In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt had signed legislation authorizing 250,000 gold one-dollar pieces to be struck by the Bureau of the Mint and paid over to organizers of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis as part of the government subsidy for the fair. The legislation was ambiguous enough to allow for multiple designs for the gold dollar, and Zerbe was among those who urged that this be done, saying it would boost sales. Other Zerbe proposals, such as a massive gold coin with a face value of \$1 billion to be exhibited at the fair, were not adopted and reinforced views of Zerbe as a huckster. Nevertheless, at the recommendation of influential fellow coin-collecting enthusiasts, Zerbe secured the position of chief numismatist to the St. Louis fair, responsible for selling the coins and medals put on sale by the U.S. government, including the two varieties of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition gold dollar. Under authorizing legislation for early commemorative coins such as the issues that Zerbe distributed, the entire mintage was conveyed to the authorized commission, who made whatever profit it could by selling them at a premium to the public.
Zerbe, in addition to exhibiting his own coins at the fair, promoted the gold dollars. Pricing them at \$3 (), an amount he stated was justified because regular-issue gold dollars commanded a premium, he also sold them mounted in spoons, jewelry and other items. He submitted articles to The Numismatist, both under his own name and anonymously, seeking to interest coin collectors in the dollars. Instead, few were sold, and he offended some coin collectors who concluded he was making misleading claims and putting the numismatic community in disrepute. Only 35,000 of the 250,000 coins were sold, many after the fair closed at just above face value to Texas coin dealer B. Max Mehl. More were taken by Zerbe himself, selling them for years afterwards at his Money of the World exhibit; according to Q. David Bowers, the price drops on the secondary market—from \$3 down to \$2 or even lower—"brought discredit upon Farran Zerbe", since he had assured purchasers that he would help maintain the price level.
In spite of these difficulties, when the 1904 ANA convention was held at the fair in St. Louis, Zerbe was elected first vice president of the organization; according to a 1961 article on Zerbe, this was because of his eloquence in addressing the convention. When he was not busy with his duties at the fair or as an ANA officer, Zerbe traveled extensively, visiting collectors and conducting research; in 1905, he wrote in The Numismatist of the preparations to begin coinage at the new Denver Mint, and found the New Orleans Mint temporarily not striking coins.
Armed with letters of recommendation from St. Louis fair officials, Zerbe next secured a position as chief numismatist to the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland, Oregon. In 1904, Congress had authorized the issuance of gold dollars to mark the Exposition, which Zerbe was tasked with marketing. Having learned from his experience in St. Louis, he asked \$2 for these, or \$10 for six. Some of these were dated 1904 and others 1905 and Zerbe tried to induce excitement by falsely claiming the 1904 issue was almost sold out, raising the price to \$2.50. He was not successful, and two-thirds of the combined mintage of just over 60,000 gold dollars was returned to the Mint for melting. He also sold medals from the Mint at the Portland exposition. Zerbe's activities at Portland yielded him a profit of about \$16,000 ().
## President of the ANA
Having completed his duties at Portland, on April 1, 1906, Zerbe boarded a coastal steamer for San Francisco. He conducted numismatic research and visited collectors, seeking information on topics such as the private issues of gold coins during the California Gold Rush, and was present during the San Francisco earthquake on April 18. Zerbe was uninjured, though furniture in the apartment where he was staying moved about and plaster and other items fell to the floor. Before he departed for Los Angeles to conduct more research, Zerbe aided those affected by the earthquake, and spent ten days gathering data and photographs for a contemplated (but never published) book on the event. In October 1906, Zerbe was the guest speaker at the first convention of the Ohio Numismatic Society in Columbus. In 1907, Zerbe mounted an exhibit at the Jamestown Exposition in Norfolk, Virginia, and unsuccessfully proposed a \$2 silver coin to be issued for that fair.
Beginning in 1907, and continuing for more than two decades, Zerbe made arrangements with banks to exhibit parts of his collection in their lobbies. This benefitted both the banks, who saw an increase of deposits, and Zerbe, who not only got whatever the bank paid him, but had the opportunity to purchase old coins brought to him by members of the public. The exhibits also featured lectures by Zerbe, as well as leaflets about coins that contained favorable articles about banks, and which were imprinted with the bank's name. The exhibits, Zerbe convinced bank officials, were a dignified form of advertising.
New York numismatic scholar Albert Frey had been elected ANA president at the St. Louis convention in 1904. After serving three years, with Zerbe as first vice president, Frey declined to run again in 1907, and Zerbe was elected president at that year's convention in Columbus, effective in January 1908, with Henri Buck as first vice president. Zerbe pledged to build the ANA in membership and prestige, setting a membership goal of 3,000—at this time, the ANA had fewer than 500 members. Although he fell short of this, 364 people joined the ANA during Zerbe's two-year tenure, many sponsored by Zerbe himself.
On June 16, 1908, Dr. George F. Heath, founder of the ANA and proprietor of The Numismatist, suddenly died. Zerbe hastened to Heath's home in Monroe, Michigan, and found Heath's files to be disorganized, with no articles pending publication. Nevertheless, he purchased The Numismatist from Heath's widow and undertook to publish it himself. Combined with his presidency, this gave him near-total control over the organization. There were complaints that Zerbe should have purchased The Numismatist for the ANA, not for himself. At the 1908 ANA convention in Philadelphia, Zerbe secured re-election, with John Henderson as first vice president, and got the membership to approve a dues increase to improve The Numismatist, moving its place of publication from Monroe to Philadelphia and hiring three assistant editors. In 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Zerbe to serve on that year's Assay Commission, the annually-appointed commission made up of government officials and members of the public that checked to see that the gold and silver coinage met the required specifications.
Zerbe by then had enemies in the numismatic world, led by Thomas L. Elder, a New York dealer who considered him a charlatan and issued satirical medals accusing him of profiteering off the Louisiana Purchase dollars. The factional fight culminated at the 1909 ANA convention in Montreal, where Zerbe was not a candidate for re-election, but backed Henderson, with the Elder faction proposing Frank C. Higgins of New York. Zerbe weaponized The Numismatist for the election, refusing to allow Higgins or Elder to be mentioned favorably in its pages, and representing their positions in a negative fashion. According to Bowers,
> Although details are not clear, it seems evident that Zerbe caused the ANA membership rolls to be padded by adding new members, men not at all interested in coins, simply to gain their votes for Henderson in the 1909 election. At the annual convention, held that year in Montreal, Zerbe had 400 proxies in hand for his pet candidate, Henderson, while Frank Higgins had just a few dozen. Higgins gamely threw in the towel and suggested that the convention unanimously elect Henderson, which it did.
With Henderson as president, Zerbe continued to control the ANA. Zerbe continued the news embargo against Elder, who responded by printing his own publications. After leaving office at the end of 1909, Zerbe tired of publishing The Numismatist, which did not make much of a profit, and in 1911 sold it to Montreal collector William Walter Coulthard Wilson, who donated it to the ANA. Zerbe apparently profited handsomely on the transaction, receiving what ANA archival papers described as a "long price" for the periodical.
## 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition
In 1915, the Panama–Pacific International Exposition was held in San Francisco to both celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal and mark San Francisco's emergence from the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906. Zerbe was appointed head of the fair's numismatic department, overseeing the sale of the coins and medals the U.S. Mint issued to commemorate the exposition. In January 1915, Congress had authorized five coins, including round and octagonal \$50 pieces. Zerbe also displayed his Money of the World exhibit and was present there almost continuously from the fair's February 1915 opening until its December closing. The Numismatist later printed an estimate that a third of the fair's 18 million visitors came to see Zerbe's exhibit, of which half a million heard the informal talks he gave, discussing the 50-centime piece he displayed and which he said had launched his interest in coin collecting.
Initially, the only government products Zerbe had to vend at his Money of the World exhibit were a souvenir medal, struck by a press operating at the Mint's exhibit, and prints produced by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, also on-site. Sales of the medal were slow, and Zerbe did not have coins to sell until at least May 8. Zerbe found the coins hard to sell; many potential purchasers, faced with a plethora of medals, reproductions of Gold Rush-era pioneer gold coins, and other wares from a variety of vendors, did not believe his coins were official government products. Treasury officials agreed to allow him space for a salesperson at the Mint's exhibit, and the lower-denominations coins were sold there, with orders taken for the \$50 pieces. Soon, though, Zerbe stopped selling the gold dollar there, and the rest of the fair's run was marked by conflict between him and Treasury representatives. The full legal allocation for each denomination had been struck, but though Zerbe continued selling coins by mail after the fair closed on December 4, sales dropped through 1916. Zerbe bought some of the surplus coins at face value, and the rest were returned to the Mint for redemption and melting.
Zerbe was present at the San Francisco Mint on June 15, 1915, for the first ceremonial striking of the octagonal \$50 piece, and operated the press, striking the 19th piece. He wrote in a 1918 article in The Numismatist that the design of the \$50 coin was not beautiful enough, and that different ones should have been used for the round and octagonal pieces; he did not blame the sculptor, Robert Aitken, who he wrote had done as well as possible given the need to produce the coins quickly. In the same year, Zerbe founded the Pacific Coast Numismatic Society (PCNS) in San Francisco. It is the oldest numismatic organization in the Western United States, and describes itself as fostering a strong tradition of research and literary publication.
## Later years, death and appraisal
After the San Francisco fair, Zerbe returned to the road and exhibitions of Money of the World. In 1919, he published a definitive catalog of Lesher Referendum Dollars, privately struck silver currency from Colorado. This so impressed Mehl that he reprinted it without permission, though the two men came to an amicable settlement. In 1926, a special issue of The Numismatist was published with Zerbe's detailed catalog of "Bryan money", pieces commemorating or satirizing the 1896 presidential campaign of William Jennings Bryan. Zerbe continued to publish articles for The Numismatist and other publications. In 1923, he was appointed for a second time to the Assay Commission, by President Warren G. Harding.
On August 25, 1920, at the ANA convention in Chicago, President Waldo C. Moore called on Moritz Wormser, Chairman of the Board, to read a paper from Zerbe. In his paper, Zerbe asked for a general circulation commemorative silver dollar, with the object of the coin to display America's desire for peace. Zerbe's writing stated: "Our example as a democracy ... was a mighty moral force that won battles without number in the hearts and in the minds of those who ultimately proved that they had the power to topple thrones". Others also called for a peace coin, and the Peace dollar was first struck in late 1921.
In 1928 and 1929, Zerbe served as chair of the Board of Governors of the ANA. In 1928, Zerbe sold his collection and library to the Chase National Bank, which had exhibited Money of the World two years earlier. The bank opened a money museum, with Zerbe as curator, in 1929. Under the agreement, he was allowed to add to the collection, or take any part of it on loan for exhibit elsewhere. He remained curator until his retirement in 1939, after which he was curator emeritus. The Chase Manhattan Bank Money Museum remained open until 1977, after which many of the pieces were donated to the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution.
Zerbe had been married to, and divorced from, Bessie Garner Knox in the 1910s; he married again, to Julia Gertrude Mahoney, in 1932. He continued to be honored by the numismatic community. In 1931, the PCNS struck a special medal honoring Zerbe as its founder, while the following year, the Chase Bank gave a special luncheon honoring Zerbe's fifty years in coin collecting. In 1944, he was named an Honorary Life Member of the ANA, and the following year was made historian of the organization, a post in which he served until his death.
Zerbe died on December 25, 1949, in New York City, after an illness of over two months. He was survived by his second wife Julia, and by two brothers. In 1951, the ANA renamed its Annual Award, its highest honor, the Farran Zerbe Memorial Award. Only ANA members were eligible for this award "given in recognition of numerous years of outstanding, dedicated service to numismatics". In 2021, the ANA Board of Governors, at the request of nearly 20 Zerbe Award winners, voted to remove his name from the award after that year's presentation. The press release cited inflated claims made by Zerbe in connection with the 1904 gold dollar, and irregularities in connection with the purchase of The Numismatist and with Zerbe's involvement in the 1909 election.
Zerbe was elected to the Numismatic Hall of Fame in 1969. Alexander stated that "as long as the ANA exists, Farran Zerbe will continue to live". According to Lupia, Zerbe had "pure genius ... as a clever businessman and numismatic aficionado to lure people into, not merely his show, but into the love of numismatics". Bowers noted, "Whether Zerbe was an idol with feet of clay whose indiscretions of 1908–09 should be overlooked is a matter of debate." Dodson wrote that Zerbe, despite his limited education, "accomplished more than the combined efforts of a host of learned scholars in publicizing numismatics at the grass roots level". Zerbe's successor as ANA historian, Jack W. Oglivie, deemed him second only to Heath in work done to make the ANA a success, and dubbed him a "pioneer who did so much to popularize numismatics. His noteworthy achievements have truly earned him the title, 'Dean of American Numismatists'."
|
16,509 |
Joan of Arc
| 1,171,678,247 |
French folk heroine and saint (1412–1431)
|
[
"1410s births",
"1431 deaths",
"15th-century Christian mystics",
"15th-century Christian saints",
"15th-century French people",
"15th-century French women",
"15th-century farmers",
"15th-century women farmers",
"Angelic visionaries",
"Anglican saints",
"Armagnac faction",
"Beatifications by Pope Pius X",
"Canonizations by Pope Benedict XV",
"Christian female saints of the Middle Ages",
"Cross-dressing saints",
"Executed French women",
"Executed people from Lorraine",
"Female wartime cross-dressers",
"French Roman Catholic saints",
"French people executed for witchcraft",
"French prisoners of war in the Hundred Years' War",
"History of Rouen",
"Joan of Arc",
"Medieval French saints",
"Michael (archangel)",
"National symbols of France",
"Overturned convictions in France",
"Patron saints of France",
"People executed by the Kingdom of England by burning",
"People executed for heresy",
"People executed under the Lancastrians",
"People from Vosges (department)",
"Prophets in Christianity",
"Reputed virgins",
"Roman Catholic mystics",
"Women in 15th-century warfare",
"Women in medieval European warfare",
"Women in war in France",
"Women mystics",
"Wrongful executions",
"Year of birth uncertain"
] |
Joan of Arc (French: Jeanne d'Arc ; c. 1412 – 30 May 1431) is a patron saint of France, honored as a defender of the French nation for her role in the siege of Orléans and her insistence on the coronation of Charles VII of France during the Hundred Years' War. Claiming to be acting under divine guidance, she became a military leader who transcended gender roles and gained recognition as a savior of France.
Joan was born to a propertied peasant family at Domrémy in northeast France. In 1428, she requested to be taken to Charles, later testifying that she was guided by visions from the archangel Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine to help him save France from English domination. Convinced of her devotion and purity, Charles sent Joan, who was about seventeen years old, to the siege of Orléans as part of a relief army. She arrived at the city in April 1429, wielding her banner and bringing hope to the demoralized French army. Nine days after her arrival, the English abandoned the siege. Joan encouraged the French to aggressively pursue the English during the Loire Campaign, which culminated in another decisive victory at Patay, opening the way for the French army to advance on Reims unopposed, where Charles was crowned as the King of France with Joan at his side. These victories boosted French morale, paving the way for their final triumph in the Hundred Years' War several decades later.
After Charles's coronation, Joan participated in the unsuccessful siege of Paris in September 1429 and the failed siege of La Charité in November. Her role in these defeats reduced the court's faith in her. In early 1430, Joan organized a company of volunteers to relieve Compiègne, which had been besieged by the Burgundians—French allies of the English. She was captured by Burgundian troops on 23 May. After trying unsuccessfully to escape, she was handed to the English in November. She was put on trial by Bishop Pierre Cauchon on accusations of heresy, which included blaspheming by wearing men's clothes, acting upon visions that were demonic, and refusing to submit her words and deeds to the judgment of the church. She was declared guilty and burned at the stake on 30 May 1431, aged about nineteen.
In 1456, an inquisitorial court reinvestigated Joan's trial and overturned the verdict, declaring that it was tainted by deceit and procedural errors. Joan has been revered as a martyr, and viewed as an obedient daughter of the Roman Catholic Church, an early feminist, and a symbol of freedom and independence. After the French Revolution, she became a national symbol of France. In 1920, Joan of Arc was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church and, two years later, was declared one of the patron saints of France. She is portrayed in numerous cultural works, including literature, music, paintings, sculptures, and theater.
## Name
Joan of Arc's name was written in a variety of ways. There is no standard spelling of her name before the sixteenth century; her last name was usually written as "Darc" without an apostrophe, but there are variants such as "Tarc", "Dart" or "Day". Her father's name was written as "Tart" at her trial. She was called "Jeanne d'Ay de Domrémy" in Charles VII's 1429 letter granting her a coat of arms. Joan may never have heard herself called "Jeanne d'Arc". The first written record of her being called by this name is in 1455, 24 years after her death.
She was not taught to read and write in her childhood, and so dictated her letters. She may have later learned to sign her name, as some of her letters are signed, and she may even have learned to read. Joan referred to herself in the letters as Jeanne la Pucelle ("Joan the Maiden") or as la Pucelle ("the Maiden"), emphasizing her virginity, and she signed "Jehanne". In the sixteenth century, she became known as the "Maid of Orleans".
## Birth and historical background
Joan of Arc was born around 1412 in Domrémy, a small village in the Meuse valley now in the Vosges department in the north-east of France. Her date of birth is unknown and her statements about her age were vague. Her parents were Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle Romée. Joan had three brothers and a sister. Her father was a peasant farmer with about 50 acres (20 ha) of land, and he supplemented the family income as a village official, collecting taxes and heading the local watch.
She was born during the Hundred Years' War between England and France, which had begun in 1337 over the status of English territories in France and English claims to the French throne. Nearly all the fighting had taken place in France, devastating its economy. At the time of Joan's birth, France was divided politically. The French king Charles VI had recurring bouts of mental illness and was often unable to rule; his brother Louis, Duke of Orléans, and his cousin John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, quarreled over the regency of France. In 1407, the Duke of Burgundy ordered the assassination of the Duke of Orléans, precipitating a civil war. Charles of Orléans succeeded his father as duke at the age of thirteen and was placed in the custody of Bernard, Count of Armagnac; his supporters became known as "Armagnacs", while supporters of the Duke of Burgundy became known as "Burgundians". The future French king Charles VII had assumed the title of Dauphin (heir to the throne) after the deaths of his four older brothers and was associated with the Armagnacs.
Henry V of England exploited France's internal divisions when he invaded in 1415. The Burgundians took Paris in 1418. In 1419, the Dauphin offered a truce to negotiate peace with the Duke of Burgundy, but the duke was assassinated by Charles's Armagnac partisans during the negotiations. The new duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, allied with the English. Charles VI accused the Dauphin of murdering the Duke of Burgundy and declared him unfit to inherit the French throne. During a period of illness, Charles's wife Isabeau of Bavaria stood in for him and signed the Treaty of Troyes, which gave their daughter Catherine of Valois in marriage to Henry V, granted the succession of the French throne to their heirs, and effectively disinherited the Dauphin. This caused rumors that the Dauphin was not King Charles VI's son, but the offspring of an adulterous affair between Isabeau and the murdered duke of Orléans. In 1422, Henry V and Charles VI died within two months of each other; the 9-month-old Henry VI of England was the nominal heir of the Anglo-French dual monarchy as agreed in the treaty, but the Dauphin also claimed the French throne.
## Early life
In her youth, Joan did household chores, spun wool, helped her father in the fields and looked after their animals. Her mother provided Joan's religious education. Much of Domrémy lay in the Duchy of Bar, whose precise feudal status was unclear; though surrounded by pro-Burgundian lands, its people were loyal to the Armagnac cause. By 1419, the war had affected the area, and in 1425, Domrémy was attacked and cattle were stolen. This led to a sentiment among villagers that the English must be expelled from France to achieve peace. Joan had her first vision after this raid.
Joan later testified that when she was thirteen, around 1425, a figure she identified as Saint Michael surrounded by angels appeared to her in the garden. After this vision, she said she wept because she wanted them to take her with them. Throughout her life, she had visions of St. Michael, a patron saint of the Domrémy area who was seen as a defender of France. She stated that she had these visions frequently and that she often had them when the church bells were rung. Her visions also included St. Margaret and St. Catherine; although Joan never specified, they were probably Margaret of Antioch and Catherine of Alexandria—those most known in the area. Both were known as virgin saints who strove against powerful enemies, were tortured and martyred for their beliefs, and preserved their virtue to the death. Joan testified that she swore a vow of virginity to these voices. When a young man from her village alleged that she had broken a promise of marriage, Joan stated that she had made him no promises, and his case was dismissed by an ecclesiastical court.
During Joan's youth, a prophecy circulating in the French countryside, based on the visions of Marie Robine of Avignon [fr], promised an armed virgin would come forth to save France. Another prophecy, attributed to Merlin, stated that a virgin carrying a banner would put an end to France's suffering. Joan implied she was this promised maiden, reminding the people around her that there was a saying that France would be destroyed by a woman but would be restored by a virgin. In May 1428, she asked her uncle to take her to the nearby town of Vaucouleurs, where she petitioned the garrison commander, Robert de Baudricourt, for an armed escort to the Armagnac court at Chinon. Baudricourt harshly refused and sent her home. In July, Domrémy was raided by Burgundian forces which set fire to the town, destroyed the crops, and forced Joan, her family and the other townspeople to flee. She returned to Vaucouleurs in January 1429. Her petition was refused again, but by this time she had gained the support of two of Baudricourt's soldiers, Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulengy. Meanwhile, she was summoned to Nancy under safe conduct by Charles II, Duke of Lorraine, who had heard about Joan during her stay at Vaucouleurs. The duke was ill and thought she might have supernatural powers that could cure him. She offered no cures, but reprimanded him for living with his mistress.
Henry V's brothers, John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, had continued the English conquest of France. Most of northern France, Paris, and parts of southwestern France were under Anglo-Burgundian control. The Burgundians controlled Reims, the traditional site for the coronation of French kings; Charles had not yet been crowned, and doing so at Reims would help legitimize his claim to the throne. In July 1428, the English had started to surround Orléans and had nearly isolated it from the rest of Charles's territory by capturing many of the smaller bridge towns on the Loire River. Orléans was strategically important as the last obstacle to an assault on the remainder of Charles's territory. According to Joan's later testimony, it was around this period that her visions told her to leave Domrémy to help the Dauphin Charles. Baudricourt agreed to a third meeting with Joan in February 1429, around the time the English captured an Armagnac relief convoy at the Battle of the Herrings during the Siege of Orléans. Their conversations, along with Metz and Poulengy's support, convinced Baudricourt to allow her to go to Chinon for an audience with the Dauphin. Joan traveled with an escort of six soldiers. Before leaving, Joan put on men's clothes, which were provided by her escorts and the people of Vaucouleurs. She continued to wear men's clothes for the remainder of her life.
## Chinon
Charles VII met Joan for the first time at the Royal Court in Chinon in late February or early March 1429, when she was seventeen and he was twenty-six. She told him that she had come to raise the siege of Orléans and to lead him to Reims for his coronation. They had a private exchange that made a strong impression on Charles; Jean Pasquerel, Joan's confessor, later testified that Joan told him she had reassured the Dauphin that he was Charles VI's son and the legitimate king.
Charles and his council needed more assurance, sending Joan to Poitiers to be examined by a council of theologians, who declared that she was a good person and a good Catholic. They did not render a decision on the source of Joan's inspiration, but agreed that sending her to Orléans could be useful to the king and would test if her inspiration was of divine origin. Joan was then sent to Tours to be physically examined by women directed by Charles's mother-in-law Yolande of Aragon, who verified her virginity. This was to establish if she could indeed be the prophesied virgin savior of France, to show the purity of her devotion, and to ensure she had not consorted with the Devil.
The Dauphin, reassured by the results of these tests, commissioned plate armor for her. She designed her own banner and had a sword brought to her from under the altar in the church at Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois. Around this time she began calling herself "Joan the Maiden", emphasizing her virginity as a sign of her mission.
Before Joan's arrival at Chinon, the Armagnac strategic situation was bad but not hopeless. The Armagnac forces were prepared to endure a prolonged siege at Orléans, the Burgundians had recently withdrawn from the siege due to disagreements about territory, and the English were debating whether to continue. Nonetheless, after almost a century of war, the Armagnacs were demoralized. Once Joan joined the Dauphin's cause, her personality began to raise their spirits, inspiring devotion and the hope of divine assistance. Her belief in the divine origin of her mission turned the longstanding Anglo-French conflict over inheritance into a religious war. Before beginning the journey to Orléans, Joan dictated a letter to the Duke of Bedford warning him that she was sent by God to drive him out of France.
## Military campaigns
### Orléans
In the last week of April 1429, Joan set out from Blois as part of an army carrying supplies for the relief of Orléans. She arrived there on 29 April and met the commander Jean de Dunois, the Bastard of Orléans. Orléans was not completely cut off, and Dunois got her into the city, where she was greeted enthusiastically. Joan was initially treated as a figurehead to raise morale, flying her banner on the battlefield. She was not given any formal command or included in military councils but quickly gained the support of the Armagnac troops. She always seemed to be present where the fighting was most intense, she frequently stayed with the front ranks, and she gave them a sense she was fighting for their salvation. Armagnac commanders would sometimes accept the advice she gave them, such as deciding what position to attack, when to continue an assault, and how to place artillery.
On 4 May, the Armagnacs went on the offensive, attacking the outlying bastille de Saint-Loup (fortress of Saint Loup). Once Joan learned of the attack, she rode out with her banner to the site of the battle, a mile east of Orléans. She arrived as the Armagnac soldiers were retreating after a failed assault. Her appearance rallied the soldiers, who attacked again and took the fortress. On 5 May, no combat occurred since it was Ascension Thursday, a feast day. She dictated another letter to the English warning them to leave France and had it tied to a bolt, which was fired by a crossbowman.
The Armagnacs resumed their offensive on 6 May, capturing Saint-Jean-le-Blanc, which the English had deserted. The Armagnac commanders wanted to stop, but Joan encouraged them to launch an assault on les Augustins, an English fortress built around a monastery. After its capture, the Armagnac commanders wanted to consolidate their gains, but Joan again argued for continuing the offensive. On the morning of 7 May, the Armagnacs attacked the main English stronghold, les Tourelles. Joan was wounded by an arrow between the neck and shoulder while holding her banner in the trench on the south bank of the river but later returned to encourage the final assault that took the fortress. The English retreated from Orléans on 8 May, ending the siege.
At Chinon, Joan had declared that she was sent by God. At Poitiers, when she was asked to show a sign demonstrating this claim, she replied that it would be given if she were brought to Orléans. The lifting of the siege was interpreted by many people to be that sign. Prominent clergy such as Jacques Gélu [fr], Archbishop of Embrun, and the theologian Jean Gerson wrote treatises in support of Joan after this victory. In contrast, the English saw the ability of this peasant girl to defeat their armies as proof she was possessed by the devil.
### Loire Campaign
After the success at Orléans, Joan insisted that the Armagnac forces should advance promptly toward Reims to crown the Dauphin. Charles allowed her to accompany the army under the command of John II, Duke of Alençon, who collaboratively worked with Joan and regularly heeded her advice. Before advancing toward Reims, the Armagnacs needed to recapture the bridge towns along the Loire: Jargeau, Meung-sur-Loire, and Beaugency. This would clear the way for Charles and his entourage, who would have to cross the Loire near Orléans to get from Chinon to Reims.
The campaign to clear the Loire towns began on 11 June when the Armagnac forces led by Alençon and Joan arrived at Jargeau and forced the English to withdraw inside the town's walls. Joan sent a message to the English to surrender; they refused and she advocated for a direct assault on the walls the next day. By the end of the day, the town was taken. The Armagnac took few prisoners and many of the English who surrendered were killed. During this campaign, Joan continued to serve in the thick of battle. She began scaling a siege ladder with her banner in hand but before she could climb the wall, she was struck by a stone which split her helmet.
Alençon and Joan's army advanced on Meung-sur-Loire. On 15 June, they took control of the town's bridge, and the English garrison withdrew to a castle on the Loire's north bank. Most of the army continued on the south bank of the Loire to besiege the castle at Beaugency.
Meanwhile, the English army from Paris under the command of Sir John Fastolf had linked up with the garrison in Meung and traveled along the north bank of the Loire to relieve Beaugency. Unaware of this, the English garrison at Beaugency surrendered on 18 June. The main English army retreated toward Paris; Joan urged the Armagnacs to pursue them, and the two armies clashed at the Battle of Patay later that day. The English had prepared their forces to ambush an Armagnac attack with hidden archers, but the Armagnac vanguard detected and scattered them. A rout ensued that decimated the English army. Fastolf escaped with a small band of soldiers, but many of the English leaders were captured. Joan arrived at the battlefield too late to participate in the decisive action, but her encouragement to pursue the English had made the victory possible.
### Coronation and siege of Paris
After the destruction of the English army at Patay, some Armagnac leaders argued for an invasion of English-held Normandy, but Joan remained insistent that Charles must be crowned. The Dauphin agreed, and the army left Gien on 29 June to march on Reims. The advance was nearly unopposed. The Burgundian-held town of Auxerre surrendered on 3 July after three days of negotiations, and other towns in the army's path returned to Armagnac allegiance without resistance. Troyes, which had a small garrison of English and Burgundian troops, was the only one to resist. After four days of negotiation, Joan ordered the soldiers to fill the city's moat with wood and directed the placement of artillery. Fearing an assault, Troyes negotiated a surrender.
Reims opened its gates on 16 July 1429. Charles, Joan, and the army entered in the evening, and Charles's consecration took place the following morning. Joan was given a place of honor at the ceremony, and announced that God's will had been fulfilled.
After the consecration, the royal court negotiated a truce of fifteen days with the Duke of Burgundy, who promised he would try to arrange the transfer of Paris to the Armagnacs while continuing negotiations for a definitive peace. At the end of the truce, Burgundy reneged on his promise. Joan and the Duke of Alençon favored a quick march on Paris, but divisions in Charles's court and continued peace negotiations with Burgundy led to a slow advance.
As the Armagnac army approached Paris, many of the towns along the way surrendered without a fight. On 15 August, the English forces under the Duke of Bedford confronted the Armagnacs near Montépilloy in a fortified position that the Armagnac commanders thought was too strong to assault. Joan rode out in front of the English positions to try to provoke them to attack. They refused, resulting in a standoff. The English retreated the following day. The Armagnacs continued their advance and launched an assault on Paris on 8 September. During the fighting, Joan was wounded in the leg by a crossbow bolt. She remained in a trench beneath the city walls until she was rescued after nightfall. The Armagnacs had suffered 1,500 casualties. The following morning, Charles ordered an end to the assault. Joan was displeased and argued that the attack should be continued. She and Alençon had made fresh plans to attack Paris, but Charles dismantled a bridge approaching Paris that was necessary for the attack and the Armagnac army had to retreat.
After the defeat at Paris, Joan's role in the French court diminished. Her aggressive independence did not agree with the court's emphasis on finding a diplomatic solution with Burgundy, and her role in the defeat at Paris reduced the court's faith in her. Scholars at the University of Paris argued that she failed to take Paris because her inspiration was not divine. In September, Charles disbanded the army, and Joan was not allowed to work with the Duke of Alençon again.
### Campaign against Perrinet Gressart
In October, Joan was sent as part of a force to attack the territory of Perrinet Gressart [fr], a mercenary who had served the Burgundians and English. The army besieged Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier, which fell after Joan encouraged a direct assault on 4 November. The army then tried unsuccessfully to take La-Charité-sur-Loire in November and December and had to abandon their artillery during the retreat. This defeat further diminished Joan's reputation.
Joan returned to court at the end of December, where she learned that she and her family had been ennobled by Charles as a reward for her services to him and the kingdom. Before the September attack on Paris, Charles had negotiated a four-month truce with the Burgundians, which was extended until Easter 1430. During this truce, the French court had no need for Joan.
### Siege of Compiègne and capture
The Duke of Burgundy began to reclaim towns which had been ceded to him by treaty but had not submitted. Compiègne was one such town of many in areas which the Armagnacs had recaptured over the previous few months. Joan set out with a company of volunteers at the end of March 1430 to relieve the town, which was under siege. This expedition did not have the explicit permission of Charles, who was still observing the truce. Some writers suggest that Joan's expedition to Compiègne without documented permission from the court was a desperate and treasonable action, but others have argued that she could not have launched the expedition without the financial support of the court.
In April, Joan arrived at Melun, which had expelled its Burgundian garrison. As Joan advanced, her force grew as other commanders joined her. Joan's troops advanced to Lagny-sur-Marne and defeated an Anglo-Burgundian force commanded by the mercenary Franquet d'Arras who was captured. Typically, he would have been ransomed or exchanged by the capturing force, but Joan allowed the townspeople to execute him after a trial.
Joan reached Compiègne on 14 May. After defensive forays against the Burgundian besiegers, she was forced to disband the majority of the army because it had become too difficult for the surrounding countryside to support. Joan and about 400 of her remaining soldiers entered the town.
On 23 May 1430, Joan accompanied an Armagnac force which sortied from Compiègne to attack the Burgundian camp at Margny, northeast of the town. The attack failed, and Joan was captured; She agreed to surrender to a pro-Burgundian nobleman named Lyonnel de Wandomme, a member of Jean de Luxembourg's contingent. who quickly moved her to his castle at Beaulieu-les-Fontaines near Noyes. After her first attempt to escape, she was transferred to Beaurevoir Castle. She made another escape attempt while there, jumping from a window of a tower and landing in a dry moat; she was injured but survived. In November, she was moved to the Burgundian town of Arras.
The English and Burgundians rejoiced that Joan had been removed as a military threat. The English negotiated with their Burgundian allies to pay Joan's ransom and transfer her to their custody. Bishop Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais, a partisan supporter of the Duke of Burgundy and the English crown, played a prominent part in these negotiations, which were completed in November. The final agreement called for the English to pay 10,000 livres tournois to obtain her from Luxembourg. After the English paid the ransom, they moved Joan to Rouen, their main headquarters in France. There is no evidence that Charles tried to save Joan once she was transferred to the English.
## Trials and execution
### Trial
Joan was put on trial for heresy in Rouen on 9 January 1431. She was accused of having blasphemed by wearing men's clothes, of acting upon visions that were demonic, and of refusing to submit her words and deeds to the church because she claimed she would be judged by God alone. Joan's captors downplayed the secular aspects of her trial by submitting her judgment to an ecclesiastical court, but the trial was politically motivated. Joan testified that her visions had instructed her to defeat the English and crown Charles, and her success was argued to be evidence she was acting on behalf of God. If unchallenged, her testimony would invalidate the English claim to the rule of France and undermine the University of Paris, which supported the dual monarchy ruled by an English king.
The verdict was a foregone conclusion. Joan's guilt could be used to compromise Charles's claims to legitimacy by showing that he had been consecrated by the act of a heretic. Cauchon served as the ordinary judge of the trial. The English subsidized the trial, including payments to Cauchon and Jean Le Maître, who represented the Inquisitor of France. All but 8 of the 131 clergy who participated in the trial were French and two thirds were associated with the University of Paris, but most were pro-Burgundian and pro-English.
Cauchon attempted to follow correct inquisitorial procedure, but the trial had many irregularities. Joan should have been in the hands of the church during the trial and guarded by women, but instead was imprisoned by the English and guarded by male soldiers under the command of the Duke of Bedford. Contrary to canon law, Cauchon had not established Joan's infamy before proceeding with the trial. Joan was not read the charges against her until well after her interrogations began. The procedures were below inquisitorial standards, subjecting Joan to lengthy interrogations without legal counsel. One of the trial clerics stepped down because he felt the testimony was coerced and its intention was to entrap Joan; another challenged Cauchon's right to judge the trial and was jailed. There is evidence that the trial records were falsified.
During the trial, Joan showed great control. She induced her interrogators to ask questions sequentially rather than simultaneously, refer back to their records when appropriate, and end the sessions when she requested. Witnesses at the trial were impressed by her prudence when answering questions. For example, in one exchange she was asked if she knew she was in God's grace. The question was meant as a scholarly trap, as church doctrine held that nobody could be certain of being in God's grace. If she answered positively, she would have been charged with heresy; if negatively, she would have confessed her own guilt. Joan avoided the trap by stating that if she was not in God's grace, she hoped God would put her there, and if she was in God's grace then she hoped she would remain so. One of the court notaries at her trial later testified that the interrogators were stunned by her answer. To convince her to submit, Joan was shown the instruments of torture. When she refused to be intimidated, Cauchon met with about a dozen assessors (clerical jurors) to vote on whether she should be tortured. The majority decided against it.
In early May, Cauchon asked the University of Paris to deliberate on twelve articles summarizing the accusation of heresy. The university approved the charges. On 23 May, Joan was formally admonished by the court. The next day, she was taken out to the churchyard of the abbey of Saint-Ouen for public condemnation. As Cauchon began to read Joan's sentence, she agreed to submit. She was presented with an abjuration document, which included an agreement that she would not bear arms or wear men's clothing. It was read aloud to her, and she signed it.
### Execution
Public heresy was a capital crime, in which an unrepentant or relapsed heretic could be given over to the judgment of the secular courts and punished by death. Having signed the abjuration, Joan was no longer an unrepentant heretic but could be executed if convicted of relapsing into heresy.
As part of her abjuration, Joan was required to renounce wearing men's clothes. She exchanged her clothes for a woman's dress and allowed her head to be shaved. She was returned to her cell and kept in chains instead of being transferred to an ecclesiastical prison. Witnesses at the rehabilitation trial stated that Joan was subjected to mistreatment and rape attempts, including one by an English noble, and that guards placed men's clothes in her cell, forcing her to wear them. Cauchon was notified that Joan had resumed wearing male clothing. He sent clerics to admonish her to remain in submission, but the English prevented them from visiting her.
On 28 May, Cauchon went to Joan's cell, along with several other clerics. According to the trial record, Joan said that she had gone back to wearing men's clothes because it was more fitting that she dress like a man while being held with male guards, and that the judges had broken their promise to let her go to mass and to release her from her chains. She stated that if they fulfilled their promises and placed her in a decent prison, she would be obedient. When Cauchon asked about her visions, Joan stated that the voices had blamed her for abjuring out of fear, and that she would not deny them again. As Joan's abjuration had required her to deny her visions, this was sufficient to convict her of relapsing into heresy and to condemn her to death. The next day, forty-two assessors were summoned to decide Joan's fate. Two recommended that she be abandoned to the secular courts immediately; the rest recommended that the abjuration be read to her again and explained. In the end, they voted unanimously that Joan was a relapsed heretic and should be abandoned to the secular power, the English, for punishment.
At about the age of nineteen, Joan was executed on 30 May 1431. In the morning, she was allowed to receive the sacraments despite the court process requiring they be denied to heretics. She was then taken to Rouen's Vieux-Marché (Old Marketplace), where she was publicly read her sentence of condemnation. At this point, she should have been turned over to the appropriate authority, the bailiff of Rouen, for secular sentencing, but instead was delivered directly to the English and tied to a tall plastered pillar for execution by burning. She asked to view a cross as she died, and was given one by an English soldier made from a stick, which she kissed and placed next to her chest. A processional crucifix was fetched from the church of Saint-Saveur. She embraced it before her hands were bound, and it was held before her eyes during her execution. After her death, her remains were thrown into the Seine River.
### Aftermath and rehabilitation trial
The military situation was not changed by Joan's execution. Her triumphs had raised Armagnac morale, and the English were not able to regain momentum. Charles remained king of France, despite a rival coronation held for the ten-year-old Henry VI of England at Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris in 1431. In 1435, the Burgundians signed the Treaty of Arras, abandoning their alliance with England. Twenty-two years after Joan's death, the war ended with a French victory at the Battle of Castillon in 1453, and the English were expelled from all of France except Calais.
Joan's execution created a political liability for Charles, implying that his consecration as the king of France had been achieved through the actions of a heretic. On 15 February 1450, a few months after he regained Rouen, Charles ordered Guillaume Bouillé, a theologian and former rector of the University of Paris, to open an inquest. In a brief investigation, Bouillé interviewed seven witnesses of Joan's trial and concluded that the judgment of Joan as a heretic was arbitrary. She had been a prisoner of war treated as a political prisoner, and was put to death without basis. Bouillé's report could not overturn the verdict but it opened the way for the later retrial.
In 1452, a second inquest into Joan's trial was opened by Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville, papal legate and relative of Charles, and Jean Bréhal, the recently appointed Inquisitor of France, who interviewed about 20 witnesses. The inquest was guided by 27 articles describing how Joan's trial had been biased. Immediately after the inquest, d'Estouteville went to Orléans on 9 June and granted an indulgence to those who participated in the ceremonies in Joan's honor on 8 May commemorating the lifting of the siege.
For the next two years d'Estouteville and Bréhal worked on the case. Bréhal forwarded a petition from Joan's mother, Isabelle, and Joan's two brothers Jean and Pierre, to Pope Nicholas V in 1454. Bréhal submitted a summary of his findings to theologians and lawyers in France and Italy, as well as a professor at the University of Vienna, most of whom gave opinions favorable to Joan. After Nicholas V died in early 1455, the new pope Callixtus III gave permission for a rehabilitation trial, and appointed three commissioners to oversee the process: Jean Juvénal des Ursins, archbishop of Reims; Guillaume Chartier, bishop of Paris; and Richard Olivier de Longueil, bishop of Coutances. They chose Bréhal as Inquisitor.
The rehabilitation trial began on 7 November 1455 at Notre Dame Cathedral when Joan's mother publicly delivered a formal request for her daughter's rehabilitation, and ended on 7 July 1456 at Rouen Cathedral, having heard from about 115 witnesses. The court found that the original trial was unjust and deceitful; Joan's abjuration, execution and their consequences were nullified. In his summary of the trial, Bréhal suggested that Cauchon and the assessors who supported him might be guilty of malice and heresy. To emphasize the court's decision, a copy of the Articles of Accusation was formally torn up. The court ordered that a cross should be erected on the site of Joan's execution.
## Visions
Joan's visions played an important role in her condemnation, and her admission that she had returned to heeding them led to her execution. Theologians of the era believed that visions could have a supernatural source. The assessors at her trial focused on determining the specific source of Joan's visions, using an ecclesiastical form of discretio spirituum (discernment of spirits). Because she was accused of heresy, they sought to show that her visions were false. The rehabilitation trial nullified Joan's sentence, but did not declare her visions authentic. In 1894, Pope Leo XIII pronounced that Joan's mission was divinely inspired.
Modern scholars have discussed possible neurological and psychiatric causes for her visions. Her visions have been described as hallucinations arising from epilepsy or a temporal lobe tuberculoma. Others have implicated ergot poisoning, schizophrenia, delusional disorder, or creative psychopathy induced by her early childhood rearing. One of the Promoters of the Faith at her 1903 canonization trial argued that her visions may have been manifestations of hysteria. Other scholars argue that Joan created some of the visions' specific details in response to the demands of the interrogators at her trial.
Many of these explanations have been challenged; the trial records designed to demonstrate that Joan was guilty of heresy are unlikely to provide the objective descriptions of symptoms needed to support a medical diagnosis.
Joan's firm belief in the divinity of her visions strengthened her confidence, enabled her to trust herself, and gave her hope during her capture and trial.
## Clothing
Joan's cross-dressing was the topic of five of the articles of accusation against her during the trial. In the view of the assessors, it was the emblem of her heresy. Her final condemnation began when she was found to have resumed wearing men's clothes, which was taken as a sign that she had relapsed into heresy.
From the time of her journey to Chinon to her abjuration, Joan usually wore men's clothes and cropped her hair in a male fashion. When she left Vaucouleurs to see the Dauphin in Chinon, Joan was said to have worn a black doublet, a black tunic, and a short black cap. By the time she was captured, she had acquired more elaborate outfits. At her trial, she was accused of wearing breeches, a mantle, a coat of mail, a doublet, hose joined to the doublet with twenty laces, tight boots, spurs, a breastplate, buskins, a sword, a dagger, and a lance. She was also described as wearing furs, a golden surcoat over her armor, and sumptuous riding habits made of precious cloth.
During the trial proceedings, Joan is not recorded as giving a practical reason why she cross-dressed. She stated that it was her own choice to wear men's clothes, and that she did so not at the request of men but by the command of God and his angels. She stated she would return to wearing women's clothes when she fulfilled her calling.
Although Joan's cross-dressing was used to justify her execution, the church's position on it was not clear. In general, it was seen as a sin, but there was no agreement about its severity. Thomas Aquinas stated that a woman may wear a man's clothes to hide herself from enemies or if no other clothes were available, and Joan did both, wearing them in enemy territory to get to Chinon, and in her prison cell after her abjuration when her dress was taken from her. Soon after the siege of Orléans was lifted, Jean Gerson said that Joan's male clothes and haircut were appropriate for her calling, as she was a warrior and men's clothes were more practical.
Cross-dressing may have helped her maintain her virginity by deterring rape and signaling her unavailability as a sexual object; scholars have stated that when she was imprisoned, wearing men's clothes would have only been a minor deterrent to rape as she was shackled most of the time. For most of her active life, Joan did not cross-dress to hide her gender. Rather, it may have functioned to emphasize her unique identity as La Pucelle, a model of virtue that transcends gender roles and inspires people.
## Legacy
Joan is one of the most studied people of the Middle Ages, partly because her two trials provided a wealth of documents. Her image, changing over time, has included being the savior of France, an obedient daughter of the Roman Catholic Church, an early feminist, and a symbol of freedom and independence.
### Military leader and symbol of France
Joan's reputation as a military leader who helped drive the English from France began to form before her death. Just after Charles's coronation, Christine de Pizan wrote the poem Ditié de Jehanne D'Arc, celebrating Joan as a supporter of Charles sent by Divine Providence and reflecting French optimism after the triumph at Orléans. As early as 1429, Orléans began holding a celebration in honor of the raising of the siege on 8 May.
After Joan's execution, her role in the Orléans victory encouraged popular support for her rehabilitation. Joan became a central part of the annual celebration, and by 1435, a play, Mistère du siège d'Orléans (Mystery of the Siege of Orléans), portrayed her as the vehicle of the divine will that liberated Orléans. The Orléans festival celebrating Joan continues in modern times.
Less than a decade after her rehabilitation trial, Pope Pius II wrote a brief biography describing her as the maid who saved the kingdom of France. Louis XII commissioned a full-length biography of her around 1500.
Joan's early legacy was closely associated with the divine right of the monarchy to rule France. During the French Revolution, her reputation came into question because of her association with the monarchy and religion, and the festival in her honor held at Orléans was suspended in 1793. In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte authorized its renewal and the creation of a new statue of Joan at Orléans, stating, "The illustrious Joan ... proved that there is no miracle which French genius cannot accomplish when national independence is threatened."
Since then, she has become a prominent symbol as the defender of the French nation. After the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Joan became a rallying point for a new crusade to reclaim Lorraine, the province of her birth. The Third Republic held a patriotic civic holiday in her honor on 8 May to celebrate her victory at Orléans. During World War I, her image was used to inspire victory. In World War II, all sides of the French cause appealed to her legacy: she was a symbol for Philippe Pétain in Vichy France, a model for Charles de Gaulle's leadership of the Free French, and an example for the Communist resistance. More recently, her association with the monarchy and national liberation has made her a symbol for the French far right, including the monarchist movement Action Française and the National Front Party. Joan's image has been used by the entire spectrum of French politics, and she is an important reference in political dialogue about French identity and unity.
### Saint and heroic woman
Joan is a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. She was viewed as a religious figure in Orléans after the siege was lifted, and an annual panegyric was pronounced there on her behalf until the 1800s. In 1849, the Bishop of Orlėans Félix Dupanloup delivered an oration that attracted international attention and in 1869, petitioned Rome to begin beatification proceedings. She was beatified by Pope Pius X in 1909, and canonized on 16 May 1920 by Pope Benedict XV. Her feast day is 30 May, the anniversary of her execution. In an apostolic letter, Pope Pius XI declared Joan one of the patron saints of France on 2 March 1922.
Joan was canonized as a Virgin, not as a Christian martyr because she had been put to death by a canonically constituted court, which did not execute for her faith in Christ, but for her private revelation. Nevertheless, she has been popularly venerated as a martyr since her death: one who suffered for her modesty and purity, her country, and the strength of her convictions. Joan is also remembered as a visionary in the Church of England with a commemoration on 30 May. She is revered in the pantheon of the Cao Dai religion.
While Joan was alive, she was already being compared to biblical women heroes, such as Esther, Judith, and Deborah. Her claim of virginity, which signified her virtue and sincerity, was upheld by women of status from both the Armagnac and Burgundian-English sides of the Hundred Years' War: Yolande of Aragon, Charles's mother-in-law, and Anne of Burgundy, Duchess of Bedford.
Joan has been described as a model of an autonomous woman who challenged traditions of masculinity and femininity to be heard as an individual in a patriarchal culture—setting her own course by heeding the voices of her visions. She fulfilled the traditionally male role of a military leader, while maintaining her status as a valiant woman. Merging qualities associated with both genders, Joan has inspired numerous artistic and cultural works for many centuries. In the nineteenth century, hundreds of work of art about her—including biographies, plays, and musical scores—were created in France, and her story became popular as an artistic subject in Europe and North America. By the 1960s, she was the topic of thousands of books. Her legacy has become global, and inspires novels, plays, poems, operas, films, paintings, children's books, advertising, computer games, comics and popular culture across the world.
## See also
- Name of Joan of Arc
- Trial of Joan of Arc
- Rehabilitation trial of Joan of Arc
- Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc
- Alternative historical interpretations of Joan of Arc
|
19,729,467 |
Franklin Pierce
| 1,172,754,443 |
14th President of the United States
|
[
"1804 births",
"1850s in the United States",
"1869 deaths",
"19th-century American Episcopalians",
"19th-century American politicians",
"19th-century presidents of the United States",
"Alcohol-related deaths in New Hampshire",
"American lawyers admitted to the practice of law by reading law",
"American military personnel of the Mexican–American War",
"American people of English descent",
"American proslavery activists",
"Bowdoin College alumni",
"Burials in New Hampshire",
"Candidates in the 1852 United States presidential election",
"Candidates in the 1856 United States presidential election",
"Deaths from cirrhosis",
"Democratic Party (United States) presidential nominees",
"Democratic Party United States senators from New Hampshire",
"Democratic Party members of the New Hampshire House of Representatives",
"Democratic Party presidents of the United States",
"Franklin Pierce",
"Franklin Pierce family",
"Jacksonian members of the United States House of Representatives from New Hampshire",
"Members of the Aztec Club of 1847",
"Military personnel from New Hampshire",
"New Hampshire lawyers",
"Northampton Law School alumni",
"People from Hillsborough, New Hampshire",
"Phillips Exeter Academy alumni",
"Presidents of the United States",
"Speakers of the New Hampshire House of Representatives",
"United States Army generals",
"United States Attorneys for the District of New Hampshire"
] |
Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804 – October 8, 1869) was the 14th president of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857. A northern Democrat who believed that the abolitionist movement was a fundamental threat to the nation's unity, he alienated anti-slavery groups by signing the Kansas–Nebraska Act and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. Conflict between North and South continued after Pierce's presidency, and, after Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, the Southern states seceded, resulting in the American Civil War.
Pierce was born in New Hampshire, the son of state governor Benjamin Pierce. He served in the House of Representatives from 1833 until his election to the Senate, where he served from 1837 until his resignation in 1842. His private law practice was a success, and he was appointed New Hampshire's U.S. Attorney in 1845. Pierce took part in the Mexican–American War as a brigadier general in the United States Army. Democrats saw him as a compromise candidate uniting Northern and Southern interests, and nominated him for president on the 49th ballot at the 1852 Democratic National Convention. He and running mate William R. King easily defeated the Whig Party ticket of Winfield Scott and William A. Graham in the 1852 presidential election.
As president, Pierce attempted to enforce neutral standards for civil service while also satisfying the Democratic Party's diverse elements with patronage, an effort that largely failed and turned many in his party against him. He was a Young America expansionist who signed the Gadsden Purchase of land from Mexico and led a failed attempt to acquire Cuba from Spain. He signed trade treaties with Britain and Japan and his Cabinet reformed its departments and improved accountability, but political strife during his presidency overshadowed these successes. His popularity declined sharply in the Northern states after he supported the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which nullified the Missouri Compromise, while many Southern whites continued to support him. The act's passage led to violent conflict over the expansion of slavery in the American West. Pierce's administration was further damaged when several of his diplomats issued the Ostend Manifesto calling for the annexation of Cuba, a document that was roundly criticized. He fully expected the Democrats to renominate him in the 1856 presidential election, but they abandoned him and his bid failed. His reputation in the North suffered further during the American Civil War as he became a vocal critic of President Abraham Lincoln.
Pierce was popular and outgoing, but his family life was difficult; his three children died young and his wife, Jane Pierce, suffered from illness and depression for much of her life. Their last surviving son was killed in a train accident while the family was traveling, shortly before Pierce's inauguration. A heavy drinker for much of his life, Pierce died in 1869 of cirrhosis. As a result of his support of the South, as well as failing to hold the Union together in time of strife, historians and scholars generally rank Pierce as one of the worst as well as least memorable U.S. presidents.
## Early life and family
### Childhood and education
Franklin Pierce was born on November 23, 1804, in a log cabin in Hillsborough, New Hampshire. He was a sixth-generation descendant of Thomas Pierce, who had moved to the Massachusetts Bay Colony from Norwich, Norfolk, England in about 1634. His father Benjamin was a lieutenant in the American Revolutionary War who moved from Chelmsford, Massachusetts to Hillsborough after the war, purchasing 50 acres (20 ha) of land. Pierce was the fifth of eight children born to Benjamin and his second wife Anna Kendrick; his first wife Elizabeth Andrews died in childbirth, leaving a daughter. Benjamin was a prominent Democratic-Republican state legislator, farmer, and tavern-keeper. During Pierce's childhood, his father was deeply involved in state politics, while two of his older brothers fought in the War of 1812; public affairs and the military were thus a major influence in his early life.
Pierce's father ensured that his sons were educated, and placed Pierce in a school at Hillsborough Center in childhood and sent him to the town school in Hancock at age 12. Not fond of schooling, Pierce grew homesick and walked 12 miles (19 km) back to his home one Sunday. His father fed him dinner and drove him part of the distance back to school before ordering him to walk the rest of the way in a thunderstorm. Pierce later cited this moment as "the turning-point in my life". Later that year, he transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy to prepare for college. By this time, he had built a reputation as a charming student, sometimes prone to misbehavior.
In fall 1820, Pierce entered Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, one of 19 freshmen. He joined the Athenian Society, a progressive literary society, alongside Jonathan Cilley (later elected to Congress) and Nathaniel Hawthorne, with whom he formed lasting friendships. He was the last in his class after two years, but he worked hard to improve his grades and graduated in fifth place in 1824 in a graduating class of 14. John P. Hale enrolled at Bowdoin in Pierce's junior year; he became a political ally of Pierce's and then his rival. Pierce organized and led an unofficial militia company called the Bowdoin Cadets during his junior year, which included Cilley and Hawthorne. The unit performed drill on campus near the president's house, until the noise caused him to demand that it halt. The students rebelled and went on strike, an event that Pierce was suspected of leading. During his final year at Bowdoin, he spent several months teaching at Hebron Academy in rural Hebron, Maine, where he earned his first salary and his students included future Congressman John J. Perry.
Pierce read law briefly with former New Hampshire Governor Levi Woodbury, a family friend in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He then spent a semester at Northampton Law School in Northampton, Massachusetts, followed by a period of study in 1826 and 1827 under Judge Edmund Parker in Amherst, New Hampshire. He was admitted to the New Hampshire bar in late 1827 and began to practice in Hillsborough. He lost his first case, but soon proved capable as a lawyer. Despite never being a legal scholar, his memory for names and faces served him well, as did his personal charm and deep voice. In Hillsborough, his law partner was Albert Baker, who had studied law under Pierce and was the brother of Mary Baker Eddy.
### Hillsborough and State politics
By 1824, New Hampshire was a hotbed of partisanship, with figures such as Woodbury and Isaac Hill laying the groundwork for a party of Democrats in support of General Andrew Jackson. They opposed the established Federalists (and their successors, the National Republicans), who were led by sitting President John Quincy Adams. The work of the New Hampshire Democratic Party came to fruition in March 1827, when their pro-Jackson nominee, Benjamin Pierce, won the support of the pro-Adams faction and was elected governor of New Hampshire essentially unopposed. While the younger Pierce had set out to build a career as an attorney, he was fully drawn into the realm of politics as the 1828 presidential election between Adams and Jackson approached. In the state elections held in March 1828, the Adams faction withdrew their support of Benjamin Pierce, voting him out of office, but Franklin Pierce won his first election, a one-year term as Hillsborough's town meeting moderator, a position to which he was reelected five times.
Pierce actively campaigned in his district on behalf of Jackson, who carried both the district and the nation by large margins in the November 1828 election, even though he lost New Hampshire. The outcome further strengthened the Democratic Party, and Pierce won his first legislative seat the following year, representing Hillsborough in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. Pierce's father was elected again as governor, retiring after that term. The younger Pierce was appointed as chairman of the House Education Committee in 1829 and the Committee on Towns the following year. By 1831 the Democrats held a legislative majority, and Pierce was elected Speaker of the House. The young Speaker used his platform to oppose the expansion of banking, protect the state militia, and offer support to the national Democrats and Jackson's re-election effort. At 27, he was a star of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. Though attaining early political and professional success, in his personal letters he continued to lament his bachelorhood and yearned for a life beyond Hillsborough.
Like all white males in New Hampshire between the ages of 18 and 45, Pierce was a member of the state militia, and was appointed aide de camp to Governor Samuel Dinsmoor in 1831. He remained in the militia until 1847, and attained the rank of colonel before becoming a brigadier general in the Army during the Mexican–American War. Interested in revitalizing and reforming the state militias, which had become increasingly dormant during the years of peace following the War of 1812, Pierce worked with Alden Partridge, president of Norwich University, a military college in Vermont, and Truman B. Ransom and Alonzo Jackman, Norwich faculty members and militia officers, to increase recruiting efforts and improve training and readiness. Pierce served as a Norwich University trustee from 1841 to 1859, and received the honorary degree of LL.D. from Norwich in 1853.
In late 1832, the Democratic Party convention nominated Pierce for one of New Hampshire's five seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. This was tantamount to election for the young Democrat, as the National Republicans had faded as a political force, while the Whigs had not yet begun to attract a large following. Democratic strength in New Hampshire was also bolstered by Jackson's landslide re-election that year. New Hampshire had been a marginal state politically, but from 1832 through the mid-1850s became the most reliably Democratic state in the Northern United States, boosting Pierce's political career. Pierce's term began in March 1833, but he would not be sworn in until Congress met in December, and his attention was elsewhere. He had recently become engaged and bought his first house in Hillsborough. Franklin and Benjamin Pierce were among the prominent citizens who welcomed President Jackson to the state on his visit in mid-1833.
### Marriage and children
On November 19, 1834, Pierce married Jane Means Appleton (March 12, 1806 – December 2, 1863), a daughter of Congregational minister Jesse Appleton and Elizabeth Means. The Appletons were prominent Whigs, in contrast with the Pierces' Democratic affiliation. Jane Pierce was shy, devoutly religious, and pro-temperance, encouraging Pierce to abstain from alcohol. She was somewhat gaunt, and constantly ill from tuberculosis and psychological ailments. She abhorred politics and especially disliked Washington, DC, creating a tension that would continue throughout Pierce's political ascent.
Jane Pierce disliked Hillsborough as well, and in 1838, the Pierces relocated to the state capital, Concord, New Hampshire. They had three sons, all of whom died in childhood. Franklin Jr. (February 2–5, 1836) died in infancy, while Frank Robert (August 27, 1839 – November 14, 1843) died at the age of four from epidemic typhus. Benjamin (April 13, 1841 – January 6, 1853) died at the age of 11 in a train accident.
## Congressional career
### U.S. House of Representatives
Pierce departed in November 1833 for Washington, D.C., where the Twenty-third United States Congress convened its regular session on December 2. Jackson's second term was under way, and the House of Representatives had a strong Democratic majority, whose primary focus was to prevent the Second Bank of the United States from being rechartered. The Democrats, including Pierce, defeated proposals supported by the newly formed Whig Party, and the bank's charter expired. Pierce broke from his party on occasion, opposing Democratic bills to fund internal improvements with federal money. He saw both the bank and infrastructure spending as unconstitutional, with internal improvements the responsibility of the states. Pierce's first term was fairly uneventful from a legislative standpoint, and he was easily re-elected in March 1835. When not in Washington, he attended to his law practice, and in December 1835 returned to the capital for the Twenty-fourth Congress.
As abolitionism grew more vocal in the mid-1830s, Congress was inundated with petitions from anti-slavery groups seeking legislation to restrict slavery in the United States. From the beginning, Pierce found the abolitionists' "agitation" to be an annoyance, and saw federal action against slavery as an infringement on southern states' rights, even though he was morally opposed to slavery itself. He was also frustrated with the "religious bigotry" of abolitionists, who cast their political opponents as sinners. "I consider slavery a social and political evil," Pierce said, "and most sincerely wish that it had no existence upon the face of the earth." Still, he wrote in December 1835, "One thing must be perfectly apparent to every intelligent man. This abolition movement must be crushed or there is an end to the Union." After the Civil War, Pierce believed that if the North had not aggressively agitated against Southern slavery, the South would have eventually ended slavery on its own and that the conflict had been "brought upon the nation by fanatics on both sides".
When Rep. James Henry Hammond of South Carolina looked to prevent anti-slavery petitions from reaching the House floor, however, Pierce sided with the abolitionists' right to petition. Nevertheless, Pierce supported what came to be known as the gag rule, which allowed for petitions to be received, but not read or considered. This passed the House in 1836. He was attacked by the New Hampshire anti-slavery Herald of Freedom as a "doughface", which had the dual meaning of "craven-spirited man" and "northerner with southern sympathies". Pierce had stated that not one in 500 New Hampshirites were abolitionists; the Herald of Freedom article added up the number of signatures on petitions from that state, divided by the number of residents according to the 1830 census, and suggested the actual number was one-in-33. Pierce was outraged when South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun read the article on the Senate floor as "proof" that New Hampshire was a hotbed of abolitionism. Calhoun apologized after Pierce replied to him in a speech which stated that most signatories were women and children, who could not vote, which therefore cast doubt on the one-in-33 figure.
### U.S. Senate
The resignation in May 1836 of Senator Isaac Hill, who had been elected governor of New Hampshire, left a short-term opening to be filled by the state legislature, and with Hill's term as senator due to expire in March 1837, the legislature also had to fill the six-year term to follow. Pierce's candidacy for the Senate was championed by state Representative John P. Hale, a fellow Athenian at Bowdoin. After much debate, the legislature chose John Page to fill the rest of Hill's term. In December 1836, Pierce was elected to the full term, to commence in March 1837, and at age 32, was at the time one of the youngest members in Senate history. The election came at a difficult time for Pierce, as his father, sister, and brother were all seriously ill, while his wife also continued to suffer from chronic poor health. As senator, he was able to help his old friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, who often struggled financially, procuring for him a sinecure as measurer of coal and salt at the Boston Customs House that allowed the author time to continue writing.
Pierce voted the party line on most issues and was an able senator, but not an eminent one; he was overshadowed by the Great Triumvirate of Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster, who dominated the Senate. Pierce entered the Senate at a time of economic crisis, as the Panic of 1837 had begun. He considered the depression a result of the banking system's rapid growth, amidst "the extravagance of overtrading and the wilderness of speculation". So that federal money would not support speculative bank loans, he supported newly elected Democratic president Martin Van Buren and his plan to create an independent treasury, a proposal which split the Democratic Party. Debate over slavery continued in Congress, and abolitionists proposed its end in the District of Columbia, where Congress had jurisdiction. Pierce supported a resolution by Calhoun against this proposal, which Pierce considered a dangerous stepping stone to nationwide emancipation. Meanwhile, the Whigs were growing in congressional strength, which would leave Pierce's party with only a small majority by the end of the decade.
One topic of particular importance to Pierce was the military. He challenged a bill which would expand the ranks of the Army's staff officers in Washington without any apparent benefit to line officers at posts in the rest of the country. He took an interest in military pensions, seeing abundant fraud within the system, and was named chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Pensions in the Twenty-sixth Congress (1839–1841). In that capacity, he urged the modernization and expansion of the Army, with a focus on militias and mobility rather than on coastal fortifications, which he considered outdated.
Pierce campaigned vigorously throughout his home state for Van Buren's re-election in the 1840 presidential election. The incumbent carried New Hampshire but lost the election to the Whig candidate, military hero William Henry Harrison. The Whigs took a majority of seats in the Twenty-seventh Congress. Harrison died after a month in office, and Vice President John Tyler succeeded him. Pierce and the Democrats were quick to challenge the new administration, questioning the removal of federal officeholders, and opposing Whig plans for a national bank. In December 1841 Pierce decided to resign from Congress, something he had been planning for some time. New Hampshire Democrats insisted that their state's U. S. senators be limited to one six-year term, so he had little likelihood of re-election. Also, he was frustrated at being a member of the legislative minority and wished to devote his time to his family and law practice. His last actions in the Senate in February 1842 were to oppose a bill distributing federal funds to the states – believing that the money should go to the military instead – and to challenge the Whigs to reveal the results of their investigation of the New York Customs House, where the Whigs had probed for Democratic corruption for nearly a year but had issued no findings.
## Party leader
### Lawyer and politician
Despite his resignation from the Senate, Pierce had no intention of leaving public life. The move to Concord had given him more opportunities for cases, and allowed Jane Pierce a more robust community life. Jane had remained in Concord with her young son Frank and her newborn Benjamin for the latter part of Pierce's senate term, and this separation had taken a toll on the family. Pierce, meanwhile, had begun a demanding but lucrative law partnership with Asa Fowler during congressional recesses. Pierce returned to Concord in early 1842, and his reputation as a lawyer continued to flourish. Known for his gracious personality, eloquence, and excellent memory, Pierce attracted large audiences in court. He would often represent poor people for little or no compensation.
Pierce remained involved in the state Democratic Party, which was split by several issues. Governor Hill, who represented the commercial, urban wing of the party, advocated the use of government charters to support corporations, granting them privileges such as limited liability and eminent domain for building railroads. The radical "locofoco" wing of his party represented farmers and other rural voters, who sought an expansion of social programs and labor regulations and a restriction on corporate privilege. The state's political culture grew less tolerant of banks and corporations after the Panic of 1837, and Hill was voted out of office. Pierce was closer to the radicals philosophically, and reluctantly agreed to represent Hill's adversary in a legal dispute regarding ownership of a newspaper—Hill lost, and founded his own paper, of which Pierce was a frequent target.
In June 1842 Pierce was named chairman of the State Democratic Committee, and in the following year's state election he helped the radical wing take over the state legislature. The party remained divided on several issues, including railroad development and the temperance movement, and Pierce took a leading role in helping the state legislature settle their differences. His priorities were "order, moderation, compromise, and party unity", which he tried to place ahead of his personal views on political issues. As he would as president, Pierce valued Democratic Party unity highly, and saw the opposition to slavery as a threat to that.
Democratic James K. Polk's dark horse victory in the 1844 presidential election was welcome news to Pierce, who had befriended the former Speaker of the House while both served in Congress. Pierce had campaigned heavily for Polk during the election, and in turn Polk appointed him as United States Attorney for New Hampshire. Polk's most prominent cause was the annexation of Texas, an issue which caused a dramatic split between Pierce and his former ally Hale, now a U.S. Representative. Hale was so impassioned against adding a new slave state that he wrote a public letter to his constituents outlining his opposition to the measure. Pierce responded by re-assembling the state Democratic convention to revoke Hale's nomination for another term in Congress. The political firestorm led to Pierce severing ties with his longtime friend, and with his law partner Fowler, who was a Hale supporter. Hale refused to withdraw, and as a majority vote was needed for election in New Hampshire, the party split led to deadlock and a vacant House seat. Eventually, the Whigs and Hale's Independent Democrats took control of the legislature, elected Whig Anthony Colby as governor and sent Hale to the Senate, much to Pierce's anger.
### Mexican–American War
Active military service was a long-held dream for Pierce, who had admired his father's and brothers' service in his youth, particularly his older brother Benjamin's, as well as that of John McNeil Jr., husband of Pierce's older half-sister Elizabeth. As a legislator, he was a passionate advocate for volunteer militias. As a militia officer himself, he had experience mustering and drilling bodies of troops. When Congress declared war against Mexico in May 1846, Pierce immediately volunteered to join, although no New England regiment yet existed. His hope to fight in the Mexican–American War was one reason he refused an offer to become Polk's Attorney General. General Zachary Taylor's advance slowed in northern Mexico, and General Winfield Scott proposed capturing the port of Vera Cruz and driving overland to Mexico City. Congress passed a bill authorizing the creation of ten regiments, and Pierce was appointed commander and colonel of the 9th Infantry Regiment in February 1847, with Truman B. Ransom as lieutenant colonel and second-in-command.
On March 3, 1847, Pierce was promoted to brigadier general, and took command of a brigade of reinforcements for General Scott's army, with Ransom succeeding to command of the regiment. Needing time to assemble his brigade, Pierce reached the already-seized port of Vera Cruz in late June, where he prepared a march of 2,500 men accompanying supplies for Scott. The three-week journey inland was perilous, and the men fought off several attacks before joining with Scott's army in early August, in time for the Battle of Contreras. The battle was disastrous for Pierce: his horse was suddenly startled during a charge, knocking him groin-first against his saddle. The horse then tripped into a crevice and fell, pinning Pierce underneath and debilitating his knee. The incident made it look like he had fainted, causing one soldier to call for someone else to take command, "General Pierce is a damned coward." Pierce returned for the following day's action, but re-injured his knee, forcing him to hobble after his men; by the time he caught up, the battle was mostly won.
As the Battle of Churubusco approached, Scott ordered Pierce to the rear to convalesce. He responded, "For God's sake, General, this is the last great battle, and I must lead my brigade." Scott yielded, and Pierce entered the fight tied to his saddle, but the pain in his leg became so great that he passed out on the field. The Americans won the battle and Pierce helped negotiate an armistice. He then returned to command and led his brigade throughout the rest of the campaign, eventually taking part in the capture of Mexico City in mid-September, although his brigade was held in reserve for much of the battle. For much of the Mexico City battle, he was in the sick tent, plagued with acute diarrhea. Pierce remained in command of his brigade during the three-month occupation of the city; while frustrated with the stalling of peace negotiations, he also tried to distance himself from the constant conflict between Scott and the other generals.
Pierce was finally allowed to return to Concord in late December 1847. He was given a hero's welcome in his home state, and submitted his resignation from the Army, which was approved on March 20, 1848. His military exploits elevated his popularity in New Hampshire, but his injuries and subsequent troubles in battle led to accusations of cowardice which would long shadow him. He had demonstrated competence as a general, especially in the initial march from Vera Cruz, but his short tenure and his injury left little for historians to judge his ability as a military commander.
Ulysses S. Grant, who had the opportunity to observe Pierce firsthand during the war, countered the allegations of cowardice in his memoirs, written several years after Pierce's death: "Whatever General Pierce's qualifications may have been for the Presidency, he was a gentleman and a man of courage. I was not a supporter of him politically, but I knew him more intimately than I did any other of the volunteer generals."
### Return to New Hampshire
Returning to Concord, Pierce resumed his law practice; in one notable case he defended the religious liberty of the Shakers, the insular sect threatened with legal action over accusations of abuse. His role as a party leader, however, continued to take up most of his attention. He continued to wrangle with Senator Hale, who was anti-slavery and had opposed the war, stances that Pierce regarded as needless agitation.
The large Mexican Cession of land divided the United States politically, with many in the North insisting that slavery not be allowed there (and offering the Wilmot Proviso to ensure it), while others wanted slavery barred north of the Missouri Compromise line of 36°30′ N. Both proposals were anathema to many Southerners, and the controversy split the Democrats. At the 1848 Democratic National Convention, the majority nominated former Michigan senator Lewis Cass for president, while a minority broke off to become the Free Soil Party, backing former president Van Buren. The Whigs chose General Zachary Taylor, a Louisianan, whose views on most political issues were unknown. Despite his past support for Van Buren, Pierce supported Cass, turning down the quiet offer of second place on the Free Soil ticket, and was so effective that Taylor, who was elected president, was held in New Hampshire to his lowest percentage in any state.
Senator Henry Clay, a Whig, hoped to put the slavery question to rest with a set of proposals that became known as the Compromise of 1850. These would give victories to North and South, and gained the support of his fellow Whig, Webster. With the bill stalled in the Senate, Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas led a successful effort to split it into separate measures so that each legislator could vote against the parts his state opposed without endangering the overall package. The bills passed, and were signed by President Millard Fillmore (who had succeeded Taylor after the president's death earlier in 1850). Pierce strongly supported the compromise, giving a well-received speech in December 1850 pledging himself to "The Union! Eternal Union!" The same month, the Democratic candidate for governor, John Atwood, issued a letter opposing the Compromise, and Pierce helped to recall the state convention and remove Atwood from the ticket. The fiasco compromised the election for the Democrats, who lost several races; still, Pierce's party retained its control over the state, and was well positioned for the upcoming presidential election.
## Election of 1852
As the 1852 presidential election approached, the Democrats were divided by the slavery issue, though most of the "Barnburners" who had left the party with Van Buren to form the Free Soil Party had returned. It was widely expected that the 1852 Democratic National Convention would result in deadlock, with no major candidate able to win the necessary two-thirds majority. New Hampshire Democrats, including Pierce, supported his old teacher, Levi Woodbury, by then an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, as a compromise candidate, but Woodbury's death in September 1851 opened up an opportunity for Pierce's allies to present him as a potential dark horse in the mold of Polk. New Hampshire Democrats felt that, as the state in which their party had most consistently gained Democratic majorities, they should supply the presidential candidate. Other possible standard-bearers included Douglas, Cass, William Marcy of New York, James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, Sam Houston of Texas, and Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri.
Despite home state support, Pierce faced obstacles to his nomination, since he had been out of office for a decade, and lacked the front-runners' national reputation. He publicly declared that such a nomination would be "utterly repugnant to my tastes and wishes", but given the desire of New Hampshire Democrats to see one of their own elected, he knew his future influence depended on his availability to run. Thus, he quietly allowed his supporters to lobby for him, with the understanding that his name would not be entered at the convention unless it was clear none of the front-runners could win. To broaden his potential base of southern support as the convention approached, he wrote letters reiterating his support for the Compromise of 1850, including the controversial Fugitive Slave Act.
The convention assembled on June 1 in Baltimore, and the deadlock occurred as expected. On the first ballot of the 288 delegates, held on June 3, Cass claimed 116, Buchanan 93, and the rest were scattered, without a single vote for Pierce. The next 34 ballots passed with no winner even close, and still no votes for Pierce. The Buchanan team then had their delegates vote for minor candidates, including Pierce, to demonstrate Buchanan's inevitability, and unite the convention behind him. This novel tactic backfired after several ballots as Virginia, New Hampshire, and Maine switched to Pierce; the remaining Buchanan forces began to break for Marcy, and Pierce was soon in third place. After the 48th ballot, North Carolina Congressman James C. Dobbin delivered an unexpected and passionate endorsement of Pierce, sparking a wave of support for the dark horse candidate. On the 49th ballot, Pierce received all but six of the votes, and thus gained the Democratic nomination for president. Delegates selected Alabama Senator William R. King, a Buchanan supporter, as Pierce's running mate, and adopted a platform that rejected further "agitation" over the slavery issue and supported the Compromise of 1850.
When word reached New Hampshire of the result, Pierce found it difficult to believe, and his wife fainted. Their son Benjamin wrote to his mother hoping that Franklin's candidacy would not be successful, as he knew she would not like to live in Washington.
The Whig candidate was General Scott, Pierce's commander in Mexico; his running mate was Secretary of the Navy William A. Graham. The Whigs could not unify their factions as the Democrats had, and the convention adopted a platform almost indistinguishable from that of the Democrats, including support of the Compromise of 1850. This incited the Free Soilers to field their own candidate, Senator Hale of New Hampshire, at the expense of the Whigs. The lack of political differences reduced the campaign to a bitter personality contest and helped to dampen voter turnout to its lowest level since 1836; according to biographer Peter A. Wallner, it was "one of the least exciting campaigns in presidential history". Scott was harmed by the lack of enthusiasm of anti-slavery northern Whigs for him and the platform; New-York Tribune editor Horace Greeley summed up the attitude of many when he said of the Whig platform, "we defy it, execrate it, spit upon it".
Pierce kept quiet so as not to upset his party's delicate unity, and allowed his allies to run the campaign. It was the custom at the time for candidates to not appear to seek the office, and he did no personal campaigning. Pierce's opponents caricatured him as an anti-Catholic coward and alcoholic ("the hero of many a well-fought bottle"). Scott, meanwhile, drew weak support from the Whigs, who were torn by their pro-Compromise platform and found him to be an abysmal, gaffe-prone public speaker. The Democrats were confident: a popular slogan was that the Democrats "will pierce their enemies in 1852 as they poked [that is, Polked] them in 1844." This proved to be true, as Scott won only Kentucky, Tennessee, Massachusetts and Vermont, finishing with 42 electoral votes to Pierce's 254. With 3.2 million votes cast, Pierce won the popular vote with 50.9 to 44.1 percent. A sizable block of Free Soilers broke for Pierce's in-state rival, Hale, who won 4.9 percent of the popular vote. The Democrats took large majorities in Congress.
## Presidency (1853–1857)
### Transition and train crash
Pierce began his presidency in mourning. Weeks after his election, on January 6, 1853, the President-elect and his family were traveling from Boston by train when their car derailed and rolled down an embankment near Andover, Massachusetts. Both Franklin and Jane Pierce survived, but their only remaining son, 11-year-old Benjamin, was crushed to death in the wreckage, his body nearly decapitated. Pierce was not able to hide the gruesome sight from his wife. They both suffered severe depression afterward, which likely affected Pierce's performance as president. Jane Pierce wondered if the train accident was divine punishment for her husband's pursuit and acceptance of high office. She wrote a lengthy letter of apology to "Benny" for her failings as a mother. She avoided social functions for much of her first two years as First Lady, making her public debut in that role to great sympathy at the annual public reception held at the White House on New Year's Day, 1855.
When Franklin Pierce departed New Hampshire for the inauguration, Jane Pierce chose not to accompany him. Pierce, then the youngest man to be elected president, chose to affirm his oath of office on a law book rather than swear it on a Bible, as all his predecessors except John Quincy Adams, who swore on a book of law, had done. He was the first president to deliver his inaugural address from memory. In the address he hailed an era of peace and prosperity at home and urged a vigorous assertion of U.S. interests in its foreign relations, including the "eminently important" acquisition of new territories. "The policy of my Administration", said the new president, "will not be deterred by any timid forebodings of evil from expansion." Avoiding the word "slavery", he emphasized his desire to put the "important subject" to rest and maintain a peaceful union. He alluded to his own personal tragedy, telling the crowd, "You have summoned me in my weakness, you must sustain me by your strength."
### Administration and political strife
In his Cabinet appointments, Pierce sought to unite a party that was squabbling over the fruits of victory. Most in the party had not originally supported him for the nomination, and some had allied with the Free Soil party to gain victory in local elections. Pierce decided to allow each of the party's factions some appointments, even those that had not supported the Compromise of 1850.
All of Pierce's cabinet nominations were unanimously and immediately confirmed by the Senate. Pierce spent the first few weeks of his term sorting through hundreds of lower-level federal positions to be filled. This was a chore, as he sought to represent all factions of the party, and could fully satisfy none of them. Partisans found themselves unable to secure positions for their friends, which put the Democratic Party on edge and fueled bitterness between factions. Before long, northern newspapers accused Pierce of filling his government with pro-slavery secessionists, while southern newspapers accused him of abolitionism.
Factionalism between the pro- and anti-administration Democrats ramped up quickly, especially within the New York Democratic Party. The more conservative Hardshell Democrats or "Hards" of New York were deeply skeptical of the Pierce administration, which was associated with Marcy (who became Secretary of State) and the more moderate New York faction, the Softshell Democrats or "Softs".
Buchanan had urged Pierce to consult Vice President-elect King in selecting the Cabinet, but Pierce did not do so—Pierce and King had not communicated since they had been selected as candidates in June 1852. By the start of 1853, King was severely ill with tuberculosis, and went to Cuba to recuperate. His condition deteriorated, and Congress passed a special law, allowing him to be sworn in before the American consul in Havana on March 24. Wanting to die at home, he returned to his plantation in Alabama on April 17 and died the next day. The office of vice president remained vacant for the remainder of Pierce's term, as the Constitution then had no provision for filling the vacancy. This extended vacancy meant that for nearly the entirety of Pierce's presidency the Senate President pro tempore, initially David Atchison of Missouri, was next in line to the presidency.
Pierce sought to run a more efficient and accountable government than his predecessors. His Cabinet members implemented an early system of civil service examinations, a forerunner to the Pendleton Act passed three decades later, which mandated that most positions in the U.S. government should be awarded on the basis of merit, not patronage. The Interior Department was reformed by Secretary Robert McClelland, who systematized its operations, expanded the use of paper records, and pursued fraud. Another of Pierce's reforms was to expand the role of the U.S. attorney general in appointing federal judges and attorneys, which was an important step in the eventual development of the Justice Department. There was a vacancy on the Supreme Court—Fillmore, having failed to get Senate confirmation for his nominees, had offered it to newly elected Louisiana Senator Judah P. Benjamin, who had declined. Pierce also offered the seat to Benjamin, and when the Louisianan persisted in his refusal, nominated instead John Archibald Campbell, an advocate of states' rights; this would be Pierce's only Supreme Court appointment.
### Economic policy and internal improvements
Pierce charged Treasury Secretary James Guthrie with reforming the Treasury, which was inefficiently managed and had many unsettled accounts. Guthrie increased oversight of Treasury employees and tariff collectors, many of whom were withholding money from the government. Despite laws requiring funds to be held in the Treasury, large deposits remained in private banks under the Whig administrations. Guthrie reclaimed these funds and sought to prosecute corrupt officials, with mixed success.
Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, at Pierce's request, led surveys by the Corps of Topographical Engineers of possible transcontinental railroad routes throughout the country. The Democratic Party had long rejected federal appropriations for internal improvements, but Davis felt that such a project could be justified as a Constitutional national security objective. Davis also deployed the Army Corps of Engineers to supervise construction projects in the District of Columbia, including the expansion of the United States Capitol and building of the Washington Monument.
### Foreign and military affairs
The Pierce administration aligned with the expansionist Young America movement, with Marcy leading the charge as Secretary of State. Marcy sought to present to the world a distinctively American, republican image. He issued a circular recommending that U.S. diplomats wear "the simple dress of an American citizen" instead of the elaborate diplomatic uniforms worn in the courts of Europe, and that they only hire American citizens to work in consulates. Marcy received international praise for his 73-page letter defending Austrian refugee Martin Koszta, who had been captured abroad in mid-1853 by the Austrian government despite his intention to become a U.S. citizen.
Davis, an advocate of a southern transcontinental route, persuaded Pierce to send rail magnate James Gadsden to Mexico to buy land for a potential railroad. Gadsden was also charged with re-negotiating the provisions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which required the U.S. to prevent Native American raids into Mexico from New Mexico Territory. Gadsden negotiated a treaty with Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna in December 1853, purchasing a large swath of land to America's southwest. Negotiations were nearly derailed by William Walker's unauthorized expedition into Mexico, and so a clause was included charging the U.S. with combating future such attempts. Congress reduced the Gadsden Purchase to the region now comprising southern Arizona and part of southern New Mexico; the price was cut from \$15 million to \$10 million. Congress also included a protection clause for a private citizen, Albert G. Sloo, whose interests were threatened by the purchase. Pierce opposed the use of the federal government to prop up private industry and did not endorse the final version of the treaty, which was ratified nonetheless. The acquisition brought the contiguous United States to its present-day boundaries, excepting later minor adjustments.
Relations with Great Britain needed resolution, as American fishermen were upset at the British Royal Navy's increasing enforcement of Canadian territorial waters. Marcy completed a trade reciprocity agreement with British minister to Washington, John Crampton, which reduced the need for British coastline enforcement. Buchanan was sent as minister to London to pressure the British government, which was slow to support a new treaty. A favorable reciprocity treaty was ratified in August 1854, which Pierce saw as a first step towards the American annexation of Canada. While the administration negotiated with Britain over the Canada–U.S. border, U.S. interests were also an issue in Central America, where the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty of 1850 had failed to keep Great Britain from expanding its influence in the region. Gaining the advantage over Britain in the region was a key part of Pierce's expansionist goals.
British consuls in the United States sought to enlist Americans for the Crimean War in 1854, in violation of neutrality laws, and Pierce eventually expelled minister Crampton and three consuls. To the President's surprise, the British did not expel Buchanan in retaliation. In his December 1855 State of the Union message to Congress, Pierce had set forth the American case that Britain had violated the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. The British, according to Buchanan, were impressed by the message and were rethinking their policy. Nevertheless, Buchanan was not successful in getting the British to abandon their Central American possessions. The Canadian treaty was ratified by Congress, the British parliament, and by the colonial legislatures in Canada.
Pierce's administration aroused sectional apprehensions when three U.S. diplomats in Europe drafted a proposal to the president to purchase Cuba from Spain for \$120 million (USD), and justify the "wresting" of it from Spain if the offer were refused. The publication of the Ostend Manifesto, which had been drawn up at the insistence of Secretary of State Marcy, provoked the scorn of northerners who viewed it as an attempt to annex a slave-holding possession to bolster Southern interests. It helped discredit the expansionist policy of Manifest Destiny the Democratic Party had often supported.
Pierce favored expansion and a substantial reorganization of the military. Secretary of War Davis and Navy Secretary James C. Dobbin found the Army and Navy in poor condition, with insufficient forces, a reluctance to adopt new technology, and inefficient management. Under the Pierce administration, Commodore Matthew C. Perry visited Japan (a venture originally planned under Fillmore) in an effort to expand trade to the East. Perry wanted to encroach on Asia by force, but Pierce and Dobbin pushed him to remain diplomatic. Perry signed a modest trade treaty with the Japanese shogunate which was successfully ratified. The 1856 launch of the USS Merrimac, one of six newly commissioned steam frigates, was one of Pierce's "most personally satisfying" days in office.
### Bleeding Kansas
The greatest challenge to the country's equilibrium during the Pierce administration was the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Organizing the largely unsettled Nebraska Territory, which stretched from Missouri to the Rocky Mountains, and from Texas north to what is now the Canada–U.S. border, was a crucial part of Douglas's plans for western expansion. He wanted a transcontinental railroad with a link from Chicago to California, through the vast western territory. Organizing the territory was necessary for settlement as the land would not be surveyed nor put up for sale until a territorial government was authorized. Those from slave states had never been content with western limits on slavery, and felt it should be able to expand into territories procured with blood and treasure that had come, in part, from the South. Douglas and his allies planned to organize the territory and let local settlers decide whether to allow slavery. This would repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820, as most of it was north of the 36°30′ N line the Missouri Compromise deemed "free". The territory would be split into a northern part, Nebraska, and a southern part, Kansas, and the expectation was that Kansas would allow slavery and Nebraska would not. In the view of pro-slavery Southern politicians, the Compromise of 1850 had already annulled the Missouri Compromise by admitting the state of California, including territory south of the compromise line, as a free state.
Pierce had wanted to organize the Nebraska Territory without explicitly addressing the matter of slavery, but Douglas could not get enough Southern votes to accomplish this. Pierce was skeptical of the bill, knowing it would result in bitter opposition from the North. Douglas and Davis convinced him to support the bill regardless. It was tenaciously opposed by northerners such as Ohio Senator Salmon P. Chase and Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, who rallied public sentiment in the North against the bill. Northerners had been suspicious of the Gadsden Purchase, moves towards Cuba annexation, and the influence of slaveholding Cabinet members such as Davis, and saw the Nebraska bill as part of a pattern of southern aggression. The result was a political firestorm that did great damage to Pierce's presidency.
Pierce and his administration used threats and promises to keep most Democrats on board in favor of the bill. The Whigs split along sectional lines; the conflict destroyed them as a national party. The Kansas–Nebraska Act was passed in May 1854 and ultimately defined the Pierce presidency. The political turmoil that followed the passage saw the short-term rise of the nativist and anti-Catholic American Party, often called the Know Nothings, and the founding of the Republican Party.
Even as the act was being debated, settlers on both sides of the slavery issue poured into the territories so as to secure the outcome they wanted in the voting. The passage of the act resulted in so much violence between groups that the territory became known as Bleeding Kansas. Thousands of pro-slavery Border Ruffians came across from Missouri to vote in the territorial elections although they were not resident in Kansas, giving that element the victory. Pierce supported the outcome despite the irregularities. When Free-Staters set up a shadow government, and drafted the Topeka Constitution, Pierce called their work an act of rebellion. The president continued to recognize the pro-slavery legislature, which was dominated by Democrats, even after a Congressional investigative committee found its election to have been illegitimate. He dispatched federal troops to break up a meeting of the Topeka government.
Passage of the act coincided with the seizure of escaped slave Anthony Burns in Boston. Northerners rallied in support of Burns, but Pierce was determined to follow the Fugitive Slave Act to the letter, and dispatched federal troops to enforce Burns's return to his Virginia owner despite furious crowds.
The midterm congressional elections of 1854 and 1855 were devastating to the Democrats (as well as to the Whig Party, which was on its last legs). The Democrats lost almost every state outside the South. The administration's opponents in the North worked together to return opposition members to Congress, though only a few northern Whigs gained election. In Pierce's New Hampshire, hitherto loyal to the Democratic Party, the Know-Nothings elected the governor, all three representatives, dominated the legislature, and returned John P. Hale to the Senate. Anti-immigrant fervor brought the Know-Nothings their highest numbers to that point, and some northerners were elected under the auspices of the new Republican Party.
### 1856 election
Pierce fully expected to be renominated by the Democrats. In reality, his chances of winning the nomination (let alone the general election) were slim. The administration was widely disliked in the North for its position on the Kansas–Nebraska Act, and Democratic leaders were aware of Pierce's electoral vulnerability. Nevertheless, his supporters began to plan for an alliance with Douglas to deny James Buchanan the nomination. Buchanan had solid political connections and had been safely overseas through most of Pierce's term, leaving him untainted by the Kansas debacle.
When balloting began on June 5 at the convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, Pierce expected a plurality, if not the required two-thirds majority. On the first ballot, he received only 122 votes, many of them from the South, to Buchanan's 135, with Douglas and Cass receiving the rest. By the following morning fourteen ballots had been completed, but none of the three main candidates were able to get two-thirds of the vote. Pierce, whose support had been slowly declining as the ballots passed, directed his supporters to break for Douglas, withdrawing his name in a last-ditch effort to defeat Buchanan. Douglas, only 43 years of age, believed that he could be nominated in 1860 if he let the older Buchanan win this time, and received assurances from Buchanan's managers that this would be the case. After two more deadlocked ballots, Douglas's managers withdrew his name, leaving Buchanan as the clear winner. To soften the blow to Pierce, the convention issued a resolution of "unqualified approbation" in praise of his administration and selected his ally, former Kentucky Representative John C. Breckinridge, as the vice-presidential nominee. This loss marked the only time in U.S. history that an elected president who was an active candidate for reelection was not nominated by his political party for a second term.
Pierce endorsed Buchanan, though the two remained distant; he hoped to resolve the Kansas situation by November to improve the Democrats' chances in the general election. He installed John W. Geary as territorial governor, who drew the ire of pro-slavery legislators. Geary was able to restore order in Kansas, though the electoral damage had already been done—Republicans used "Bleeding Kansas" and "Bleeding Sumner" (the brutal caning of Charles Sumner by South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks in the Senate chamber) as election slogans. The Buchanan/Breckinridge ticket was elected, but the Democratic percentage of the popular vote in the North fell from 49.8 percent in 1852 to 41.4 in 1856 as Buchanan won only five of sixteen free states (Pierce had won fourteen), and in three of those, Buchanan won because of a split between the Republican candidate, former California senator John C. Frémont and the Know Nothing, former president Fillmore.
Pierce did not temper his rhetoric after losing the nomination. In his final message to Congress, delivered in December 1856, he vigorously attacked Republicans and abolitionists. He took the opportunity to defend his record on fiscal policy, and on achieving peaceful relations with other nations. In the final days of the Pierce administration, Congress passed bills to increase the pay of army officers and to build new naval vessels, also expanding the number of seamen enlisted. It also passed a tariff reduction bill he had long sought. Pierce and his cabinet left office on March 4, 1857, the only time in U.S. history that the original cabinet members all remained for a full four-year term.
## Post-presidency (1857–1869)
After leaving the White House, the Pierces remained in Washington for more than two months, staying with former Secretary of State William L. Marcy. Buchanan altered course from the Pierce administration, replacing all his appointees. The Pierces eventually moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where Pierce had begun to speculate in property. Seeking warmer weather, he and Jane spent the next three years traveling, beginning with a stay in Madeira and followed by tours of Europe and the Bahamas. In Rome, he visited Nathaniel Hawthorne; the two men spent much time together and the author found the retired president as buoyant as ever.
Pierce never lost sight of politics during his travels, commenting regularly on the nation's growing sectional conflict. He insisted that northern abolitionists stand down to avoid a southern secession, writing that the bloodshed of a civil war would "not be along Mason and Dixon's line merely", but "within our own borders in our own streets". He also criticized New England Protestant ministers, who largely supported abolition and Republican candidates, for their "heresy and treason". The rise of the Republican Party forced the Democrats to defend Pierce; during his debates with Republican Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln in 1858, Douglas called the former president "a man of integrity and honor".
As the Democratic Convention of 1860 approached, some asked Pierce to run as a compromise candidate that could unite the fractured party, but Pierce refused. As Douglas struggled to attract southern support, Pierce backed Cushing and then Breckinridge as potential alternatives, but his priority was a united Democratic Party. The split Democrats were soundly defeated for the presidency by the Republican candidate, Lincoln. In the months between Lincoln's election, and his inauguration on March 4, 1861, Pierce looked on as several southern states began plans to secede. He was asked by Justice Campbell to travel to Alabama and address that state's secession convention. Due to illness he declined, but sent a letter appealing to the people of Alabama to remain in the Union, and give the North time to repeal laws against southern interests and to find common ground.
### Civil War
After efforts to prevent the Civil War ended with the firing on Fort Sumter, Northern Democrats, including Douglas, endorsed Lincoln's plan to bring the Southern states back into the fold by force. Pierce wanted to avoid war at all costs, and wrote to Van Buren, proposing an assembly of former U.S. presidents to resolve the issue, but this suggestion was not acted on. "I will never justify, sustain or in any way or to any extent uphold this cruel, heartless, aimless, unnecessary war," Pierce wrote to his wife. Pierce publicly opposed President Lincoln's order suspending the writ of habeas corpus, arguing that even in a time of war, the country should not abandon its protection of civil liberties. This stand won him admirers with the emerging Northern Peace Democrats, but others saw the stand as further evidence of Pierce's southern bias.
In September 1861, Pierce traveled to Michigan, visiting his former Interior Secretary, McClelland, former senator Cass, and others. A Detroit bookseller, J. A. Roys, sent a letter to Lincoln's Secretary of State, William H. Seward, accusing the former president of meeting with disloyal people, and saying he had heard there was a plot to overthrow the government and establish Pierce as president. Later that month, the pro-administration Detroit Tribune printed an item calling Pierce "a prowling traitor spy", and intimating that he was a member of the pro-Confederate Knights of the Golden Circle. No such conspiracy existed, but a Pierce supporter, Guy S. Hopkins, sent to the Tribune a letter purporting to be from a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, indicating that "President P." was part of a plot against the Union. Hopkins intended for the Tribune to make the charges public, at which point Hopkins would admit authorship, thus making the Tribune editors seem overly partisan and gullible. Instead, the Tribune editors forwarded the Hopkins letter to government officials. Seward then ordered the arrest of possible "traitors" in Michigan, which included Hopkins. Hopkins confessed authorship of the letter and admitted the hoax, but despite this, Seward wrote to Pierce demanding to know if the charges were true. Pierce denied them, and Seward hastily backtracked. Later, Republican newspapers printed the Hopkins letter in spite of his admission that it was a hoax, and Pierce decided that he needed to clear his name publicly. When Seward refused to make their correspondence public, Pierce publicized his outrage by having a Senate ally, California's Milton Latham, read the letters between Seward and Pierce into the Congressional record, to the administration's embarrassment.
The institution of the draft and the arrest of outspoken anti-administration Democrat Clement Vallandigham further incensed Pierce, who gave an address to New Hampshire Democrats in July 1863 vilifying Lincoln. "Who, I ask, has clothed the President with power to dictate to any one of us when we must or when we may speak, or be silent upon any subject, and especially in relation to the conduct of any public servant?", he demanded. Pierce's comments were ill-received in much of the North, especially as his criticism of Lincoln's aims coincided with the twin Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Pierce's reputation in the North was further damaged the following month when the Mississippi plantation of the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, was seized by Union soldiers. Pierce's correspondence with Davis, all pre-war, revealing his deep friendship with Davis and predicting that civil war would result in insurrection in the North, was sent to the press. Pierce's words hardened abolitionist sentiment against him.
Jane Pierce died of tuberculosis in Andover, Massachusetts in December 1863; she was buried at Old North Cemetery in Concord, New Hampshire. Pierce was further grieved by the death of his close friend Nathaniel Hawthorne in May 1864; he was with Hawthorne when the author died unexpectedly. Hawthorne had controversially dedicated his final book to Pierce. Some Democrats tried again to put Pierce's name up for consideration as the 1864 presidential election unfolded, but he kept his distance; Lincoln easily won a second term. When news spread of Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, a mob gathered outside Pierce's home in Concord, demanding to know why he had not raised a flag as a public mourning gesture. Pierce grew angry, expressing sadness over Lincoln's death but denying any need for a public gesture. He told them that his history of military and public service proved his patriotism, which was enough to quiet the crowd.
### Final years and death
Pierce's drinking impaired his health in his last years, and he grew increasingly spiritual. He had a brief relationship with an unknown woman in mid-1865. During this time, he used his influence to improve the treatment of Davis, now a prisoner at Fort Monroe in Virginia. He also offered financial help to Hawthorne's son Julian, as well as to his own nephews. On the second anniversary of Jane's death, Pierce was baptized into his wife's Episcopal faith at St. Paul's Church in Concord. He found this church to be less political than his former Congregational denomination, which had alienated Democrats with anti-slavery rhetoric. He took up the life of an "old farmer", as he called himself, buying up property, drinking less, farming the land himself, and hosting visiting relatives. He spent most of his time in Concord and his cottage at Little Boar's Head on the coast, sometimes visiting Jane's relatives in Massachusetts. Still interested in politics, he expressed support for Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction policy and supported the president's acquittal in his impeachment trial; he later expressed optimism for Johnson's successor, Ulysses S. Grant.
Pierce's health began to decline again in mid-1869; he resumed heavy drinking despite his deteriorating physical condition. He returned to Concord that September, suffering from severe cirrhosis of the liver, knowing he would not recover. A caretaker was hired; none of his family members were present in his final days. He died at 4:35 am on Friday, October 8, 1869, at the age of 64. President Grant, who later defended Pierce's service in the Mexican-American War, declared a day of national mourning. Newspapers across the country carried lengthy front-page stories examining Pierce's colorful and controversial career. Pierce was interred next to his wife and two of his sons in the Minot enclosure at Concord's Old North Cemetery.
In his last will, which he signed January 22, 1868, Pierce left a large number of specific bequests such as paintings, swords, horses, and other items to friends, family, and neighbors. Much of his \$72,000 estate (equal to \$ today) went to his brother Henry's family, and to Hawthorne's children and Pierce's landlady. Henry's son Frank Pierce received the largest share.
## Sites, memorials, and honors
In addition to his LL.D. from Norwich University, Pierce received honorary doctorates from Bowdoin College (1853) and Dartmouth College (1860).
Two places in New Hampshire have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places specifically because of their association with Pierce. The Franklin Pierce Homestead in Hillsborough is a state park and a National Historic Landmark, open to the public. The Franklin Pierce House in Concord, where Pierce died, was destroyed by fire in 1981, but is nevertheless listed on the register. The Pierce Manse, his Concord home from 1842 to 1848, is open seasonally and maintained by a volunteer group, "The Pierce Brigade". A statue of Pierce by Augustus Lukeman, dedicated in 1914, stands on the grounds of the New Hampshire State House. New Hampshire Historical Markers \#65, \#80, \#125, and \#216 commemorate Pierce and his family around New Hampshire.
Several institutions and places have been named after Pierce, many in New Hampshire:
- The Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, New Hampshire, was chartered in 1962.
- The University of New Hampshire School of Law was founded in 1973 as the Franklin Pierce Law Center. When the school was renamed in 2010, a Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property was established.
- There is a Mt. Pierce in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire's White Mountains, renamed from Mt. Clinton in 1913.
- The small town of Pierceton, Indiana, was founded in the 1850s and honors President Pierce.
- Pierce County, Washington, the second most populous county in the state, is named in honor of President Pierce.
- Pierce County, Georgia, established in 1857, is also named in honor of President Pierce.
## Legacy
After his death, Pierce mostly passed from the American consciousness, except as one of a series of presidents whose disastrous tenures led to civil war. Pierce's presidency is widely regarded as a failure; he is often described as one of the worst presidents in American history. The public placed him third-to-last among his peers in C-SPAN surveys (2000 and 2009). Part of his failure was in allowing a divided Congress to take the initiative, most disastrously with the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Although he did not lead that fight—Senator Douglas did—Pierce paid the cost in damage to his reputation. The failure of Pierce, as president, to secure sectional conciliation helped bring an end to the dominance of the Democratic Party that had started with Jackson, and led to a period of over seventy years when the Republicans mostly controlled national politics.
Historian Eric Foner says, "His administration turned out to be one of the most disastrous in American history. It witnessed the collapse of the party system inherited from the Age of Jackson".
Biographer Roy F. Nichols argues:
> As a national political leader Pierce was an accident. He was honest and tenacious of his views but, as he made up his mind with difficulty and often reversed himself before making a final decision, he gave a general impression of instability. Kind, courteous, generous, he attracted many individuals, but his attempts to satisfy all factions failed and made him many enemies. In carrying out his principles of strict construction he was most in accord with Southerners, who generally had the letter of the law on their side. He failed utterly to realize the depth and the sincerity of Northern feeling against the South and was bewildered at the general flouting of the law and the Constitution, as he described it, by the people of his own New England. At no time did he catch the popular imagination. His inability to cope with the difficult problems that arose early in his administration caused him to lose the respect of great numbers, especially in the North, and his few successes failed to restore public confidence. He was an inexperienced man, suddenly called to assume a tremendous responsibility, who honestly tried to do his best without adequate training or temperamental fitness.
Despite a reputation as an able politician and a likable man, during his presidency Pierce served only as a moderator among the increasingly bitter factions that were driving the nation towards civil war. To Pierce, who saw slavery as a question of property rather than morality, the Union was sacred; because of this, he saw the actions of abolitionists, and the more moderate Free Soilers, as divisive and as a threat to the constitutionally-guaranteed rights of southerners. Although he criticized those who sought to limit or end slavery, he rarely rebuked southern politicians who took extreme positions or opposed northern interests.
David Potter concludes that the Ostend Manifesto and the Kansas–Nebraska Act were "the two great calamities of the Franklin Pierce administration ... Both brought down an avalanche of public criticism." More important, says Potter, they permanently discredited Manifest Destiny and "popular sovereignty" as political doctrines. Historian Kenneth Nivison, writing in 2010, takes a more favorable view of Pierce's foreign policy, stating that his expansionism prefaced those of later presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, who served at a time when America had the military might to make her desires stick. "American foreign and commercial policy beginning in the 1890s, which eventually supplanted European colonialism by the middle of the twentieth century, owed much to the paternalism of Jacksonian Democracy cultivated in the international arena by the Presidency of Franklin Pierce."
Historian Larry Gara, who authored a book on Pierce's presidency, wrote in the former president's entry in American National Biography Online:
> He was president at a time that called for almost superhuman skills, yet he lacked such skills and never grew into the job to which he had been elected. His view of the Constitution and the Union was from the Jacksonian past. He never fully understood the nature or depth of Free Soil sentiment in the North. He was able to negotiate a reciprocal trade treaty with Canada, to begin the opening of Japan to western trade, to add land to the Southwest, and to sign legislation for the creation of an overseas empire [the Guano Islands Act]. His Cuba and Kansas policies led only to deeper sectional strife. His support for the Kansas–Nebraska Act and his determination to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act helped polarize the sections. Pierce was hard-working and his administration largely untainted by graft, yet the legacy from those four turbulent years contributed to the tragedy of secession and civil war.
Historian and biographer Peter A. Wallner notes that:
> History has accorded to the Pierce administration a share of the blame for policies that incited the slavery issue, hastened the collapse of the second party system, and brought on the Civil War. ... It is both an inaccurate and unfair judgment. Pierce was always a nationalist attempting to find a middle ground to keep the Union together. ... The alternative to attempting to steer a moderate course was the breakup of the Union, the Civil War and the deaths of more than six hundred thousand Americans. Pierce should not be blamed for attempting throughout his political career to avoid this fate.
## See also
- List of deaths through alcohol
- New Hampshire Historical Marker No. 80: Franklin Pierce 1804–1869
|
27,915,686 |
Pedro Afonso, Prince Imperial of Brazil
| 1,166,174,877 | null |
[
"1848 births",
"1850 deaths",
"Brazilian people of Austrian descent",
"Brazilian people of Italian descent",
"Brazilian people of Portuguese descent",
"Heirs apparent who never acceded",
"House of Braganza",
"People from Rio de Janeiro (city)",
"Princes Imperial of Brazil",
"Royal reburials",
"Royalty who died as children",
"Sons of emperors"
] |
Dom Pedro Afonso (19 July 1848 – 10 January 1850) was the Prince Imperial and heir apparent to the throne of the Empire of Brazil. Born at the Palace of São Cristóvão in Rio de Janeiro, he was the second son and youngest child of Emperor Dom Pedro II and Dona Teresa Cristina of the Two Sicilies, and thus a member of the Brazilian branch of the House of Braganza. Pedro Afonso was seen as vital to the future viability of the monarchy, which had been put in jeopardy by the death of his older brother Dom Afonso almost three years earlier.
Pedro Afonso's death from fever at the age of one devastated the Emperor, and the imperial couple had no further children. Pedro Afonso's older sister Dona Isabel became heiress, but Pedro II was unconvinced that a woman could ever be accepted as monarch by the ruling elite. He excluded Isabel from matters of state and failed to provide training for her possible role as empress. With no surviving male children, the Emperor came to understand that the imperial line was destined to end with his own death.
## Infancy and early death
### Birth
Pedro Afonso was born at 08:00 on 19 July 1848 in the Palace of São Cristóvão in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His full name was Pedro Afonso Cristiano Leopoldo Eugênio Fernando Vicente Miguel Gabriel Rafael Gonzaga. Through his father, Emperor Pedro II, he was a member of the Brazilian branch of the House of Braganza and was referred to using the honorific Dom (Lord) from birth. He was the grandson of Emperor Dom Pedro I and the nephew of the reigning Queen of Portugal, Dona Maria II. Through his mother, Teresa Cristina, he was a grandson of Don Francesco I (Francis I) and nephew to Don Ferdinando II (Ferdinand II), who ruled as kings of the Two Sicilies in turn.
Following the birth, Pedro II received official congratulations at a formal reception held later that day, which according to a contemporary was an event "more splendid and better attended" than any since the Emperor was declared of age in 1840. News of the birth of a male heir was received with rejoicing among the Brazilian people. Celebrations included skyrockets and artillery salutes. City streets were illuminated for days after the birth, and an elaborate gala was held at court. The birth of Pedro Afonso was widely welcomed, as a male heir was regarded as imperative for the Empire's continuation, even though the constitution allowed for female succession. Writer Manuel de Araújo Porto Alegre (later Baron of Santo Ângelo) considered the birth of Pedro Afonso a "triumph" that had secured the succession.
Pedro Afonso's baptism took place on 4 October 1848. The ceremony was held privately in the Imperial Chapel, followed by public celebrations. The godparents were his granduncle Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria and his step-grandmother Amélie of Leuchtenberg. Prime Minister and former regent Pedro de Araújo Lima (then-Viscount and later Marquis of Olinda) and Mariana de Verna, Countess of Belmont represented the godparents, who were not present. Fireworks entertained the crowds, and a band shell that could hold more than a hundred musicians was raised for the festivities that followed. According to historian Hendrik Kraay, royal baptisms in imperial Brazil "stressed that the princes and princesses secured the dynasty's future". As the sole surviving male child, Pedro Afonso took precedence in the line of succession over his two older sisters, Dona Isabel and Dona Leopoldina. Pedro Afonso, as heir apparent to the Brazilian throne, was styled "Prince Imperial" from birth.
### Death
In 1847 and the two following years, Pedro II and his family spent the summer at Petrópolis. The traditional summer residence of the imperial family was at Santa Cruz Estate, a rural property that had belonged to the Braganzas for generations. The shift to Petrópolis seemed an unwelcome novelty among members of the court, "who disliked any change that threatened the established ways and interests". Bowing to tradition, the Emperor decided to again summer at Santa Cruz in 1850. During the imperial family's stay at the rural estate, Pedro Afonso and his sister Isabel were struck by fever. The princess eventually recovered, but the Prince Imperial died of convulsions at 04:20 on 10 January. Contemporaries argued that either encephalitis or a congenital disorder may have caused his death.
Pedro II regarded the death of his son as "the most fatal blow that I could ever receive, and certainly I would not have survived were it not that I still have a wife and two children". The Emperor wrote to his brother-in-law Dom Fernando II, King-consort of Portugal: "By the time you receive this, you will certainly have learnt of the grievous loss I have undergone ... God who has made me pass through so hard a testing, will in his mercy give me grounds to console my sorrows." Pedro II had already lost another son, Dom Afonso, almost three years earlier. He revealed his inner turmoil in a sonnet: "Twice already I have suffered death, for the father dies who sees his son is dead." Except for brief inspection visits, the Emperor avoided Santa Cruz thereafter.
A grand funeral was held for the Prince Imperial two days after his death. The streets were crowded with ordinary people who greatly mourned the prince's death. So remarkable was the event that tourists paid for the privilege of watching the funeral procession from a hotel in downtown Rio de Janeiro. Pedro Afonso was buried in the mausoleum of the Convento de Santo Antônio (Convent of Saint Anthony) in Rio de Janeiro.
### Legacy
Honório Hermeto Carneiro Leão (later Marquis of Paraná), one of Brazil's leading politicians and then serving as president (governor) of the province of Pernambuco, summarized the prevalent view among Brazil's ruling elite regarding the succession of the Empire when he addressed the Provincial Assembly: "It is my painful duty to inform you of the death of the Prince Imperial D. Pedro Afonso, which occurred on 10 January of the current year. It is the second time we lose the heir presumptive of the crown." Honório Hermeto continued: "It must serve as a consolation to us, the certainty of [good] health of H[is]. M[ajesty]. the Emperor and his august wife. Both in the prime of their years, and full of life, still promise both numerous fruits from their conjugal bed as well as a male succession to the crown, as required for both the consolidation of our still recent institutions and the restless spirit of the century."
What no one could foresee was that Pedro II and Teresa Cristina would have no more children. The reason is unknown, although scholars think it is probably because they no longer had sexual intercourse. The Emperor was devastated by the death of Pedro Afonso and was never able to cope with it entirely. According to historian Roderick J. Barman, Pedro II was "deeply affected, emotionally and intellectually". The Emperor wrote a sonnet that expressed his feelings:
> > But who can recount what feels the broken soul of the father from whom, of God, your sword cuts off the flower of his future, the beloved child.
In the Emperor's eyes, the deaths of his sons seemed to presage the end of the imperial system. His younger son had represented his future and that of the monarchy. Although the Emperor still had a legal successor in his daughter Isabel, he had little confidence that a woman could rule Brazil in the male-dominated social climate of the time. He did nothing to prepare Isabel for the responsibilities of ascending the throne, nor did he attempt to encourage acceptance of a female ruler among the political class. The lack of a male heir caused him to lose motivation in promoting the imperial office as a position to be carried on by his descendants; he increasingly saw the imperial system as so inextricably linked to himself that it could not survive him.
## Titles, styles and honors
### Titles and styles
- 19 July 1848 – 9 January 1850: His Imperial Highness The Prince Imperial
The prince's full style and title was "His Imperial Highness Dom Pedro, Prince Imperial of Brazil".
### Honors
The Prince Imperial was a recipient of the following Brazilian Orders:
- Major Commander of the Order of Christ
- Major Commander of the Order of Saint Benedict of Aviz
- Major Commander of the Order of Saint James of the Sword
- Grand Cross of the Order of Pedro I
- Grand Cross and Grand Major Dignitary of the Order of the Rose
## Ancestry
|
1,057,630 |
Battle of Dunbar (1650)
| 1,173,630,012 |
Battle during the English invasion of Scotland
|
[
"1650 in Scotland",
"Battles involving Scotland",
"Battles of the English Civil Wars",
"Conflicts in 1650",
"Dunbar",
"History of East Lothian",
"Invasions of Scotland",
"Inventory of Historic Battlefields in Scotland",
"Military history of England"
] |
The Battle of Dunbar was fought between the English New Model Army, under Oliver Cromwell, and a Scottish army commanded by David Leslie on 3 September 1650 near Dunbar, Scotland. The battle resulted in a decisive victory for the English. It was the first major battle of the 1650 invasion of Scotland, which was triggered by Scotland's acceptance of Charles II as king of Britain after the beheading of his father, Charles I on 30 January 1649.
After Charles I's execution, the English Rump Parliament established a republican Commonwealth in England. When their erstwhile ally, Scotland, recognised Charles II as king of all of Britain on 1 May 1650 and began recruiting an army to support him, the English dispatched the New Model Army, under the command of Cromwell. The army crossed into Scotland on 22 July, with a force of over 16,000 men. The Scots withdrew to Edinburgh, stripping the land of provisions. Cromwell attempted to draw the Scots out into a set piece battle, but they resisted, and Cromwell was unable to break through their defensive line. At the end of August, with his army weakened through disease and lack of food, Cromwell withdrew to the port of Dunbar. The Scottish army followed and took up an unassailable position on Doon Hill, overlooking the town. On 2 September, the Scots advanced towards Dunbar and the English took up positions outside the town. The English army was greatly weakened by sickness and lack of food, while many of the Scots' most experienced men had been dismissed in religious purges.
Before dawn on 3 September the English launched a surprise attack on the Scots, who were poorly prepared. The fighting was restricted to the north-eastern flank with the main contingents of English and Scottish cavalry fighting inconclusively, as did the English and Scottish infantry. Due to the terrain Leslie was unable to reinforce the fighting, while Cromwell used his last reserve to outflank the Scots. The Scottish cavalry broke and routed; the Scottish infantry made a fighting retreat but suffered heavy casualties. Between 300 and 500 Scots were killed, approximately 1,000 wounded and at least 6,000 were taken prisoner from an army of 12,500 or fewer.
After the battle, the Scottish government took refuge in Stirling, where Leslie rallied what remained of his army. The English captured Edinburgh and the strategically important port of Leith. In the summer of 1651 the English crossed the Firth of Forth to land a force in Fife; they defeated the Scots at Inverkeithing and so threatened the northern Scottish strongholds. Leslie and Charles II marched south in an unsuccessful attempt to rally Royalist supporters in England. The Scottish government, left in an untenable situation, surrendered to Cromwell, who then followed the Scottish army south. At the Battle of Worcester, precisely one year after the Battle of Dunbar, Cromwell crushed the Scottish army, ending the war.
## Background
### First and Second English Civil Wars
After years of rising tensions, the relationship between the king of England, Charles I, and his English Parliament broke down in armed conflict in 1642, starting the First English Civil War. Charles was also, but separately, king of Scotland. He had gone to war with his Scottish subjects in the Bishops' Wars in 1639 and 1640. These had arisen from the Scots' refusal to accept Charles's attempts to reform the Scottish Kirk to bring it into line with English religious practices. Charles was not successful in these endeavours and the ensuing settlement established the Covenanters' hold on Scottish government, requiring all civil office-holders, parliamentarians and clerics to sign the National Covenant and giving the Scottish Parliament the authority to approve all of the king's councillors in Scotland.
In England, Charles's supporters, the Royalists, were opposed by the combined forces of the English Parliamentarians and the Scots, who in 1643 had formed an alliance bound by the Solemn League and Covenant, in which the English Parliament agreed to reform the English church along similar lines to the Scottish Kirk in return for the Scots' military assistance. After four years of war the Royalists were defeated. With his capital at Oxford under siege, Charles escaped on 27 April 1646, surrendered to the Scots at Southwell on 5 May and was taken to Newcastle, which was in Scottish hands. The Scots and the English Parliament agreed on a peace settlement which they put before the King. Known as the Newcastle Propositions, it would have required all of the King's subjects in Scotland, England and Ireland to sign the Solemn League and Covenant, brought the church in each kingdom into accordance with the Covenant and with Presbyterianism and ceded much of Charles's secular authority as king of England to the English Parliament. The Scots spent some months trying to persuade Charles to agree to these terms, but he refused to do so. Eventually, under pressure from the English to withdraw their forces now the war was over, the Scots handed Charles over to the English parliamentary forces in exchange for a financial settlement and left England on 3 February 1647.
Charles then engaged in separate negotiations with different factions. Presbyterian English Parliamentarians and the Scots wanted him to accept a modified version of the Newcastle Propositions, but in June, Cornet George Joyce of the New Model Army seized Charles, and the army council pressed him to accept the Heads of Proposals, a less demanding set of terms which, crucially, did not require a Presbyterian reformation of the church. He rejected these as well and instead signed an offer known as the Engagement, which had been thrashed out with the Scottish delegation, on 26 December. Charles agreed to confirm the Solemn League and Covenant by Act of Parliament in both kingdoms and to accept Presbyterianism in England, but only for a trial period of three years, in return for the Scots' assistance in regaining his throne in England.
When the delegation returned to Edinburgh with the Engagement, the Scots were bitterly divided on whether or not to accept its terms. Its supporters, who became known as the Engagers, argued that it offered the best chance the Scots would get of acceptance of the Covenant across the three kingdoms and that rejecting it risked pushing Charles to accept the Heads of Proposals. It was opposed by those who believed that to send an army into England on behalf of the King would be to break the Solemn League and Covenant and that it offered no guarantee of a lasting Presbyterian church in England; the Kirk went so far as to issue a declaration on 5 May 1648 that condemned the Engagement as a breach of God's law. After a protracted political struggle, the Engagers gained a majority in the Scottish Parliament, by which time war had again broken out in England between Royalists and Parliamentarians. The Scots sent an army under the command of the Duke of Hamilton into England to fight on behalf of the King in July, but it was heavily defeated at Preston by a force led by Oliver Cromwell. The rout of the Engager army led to further political upheaval in Scotland and the faction opposed to the Engagement was able to regain control of the government, with the assistance of a group of English Parliamentary cavalry led by Cromwell.
### Accession of Charles II
Exasperated by the prolonged bloodshed, the New Model Army purged parliament and established the Rump Parliament, which had Charles tried for treason against the English people; he was executed on 30 January 1649, and the republican Commonwealth was created. The Scottish Parliament, which had not been consulted prior to the King's execution, declared his son, also Charles, king of Britain. Before they would permit him to return from exile in the Dutch Republic to take up his crown, they demanded that he first sign both Covenants: recognising the authority of the Kirk in religious matters and that of parliament in civil affairs. Charles II was initially reluctant to accept these conditions, but after Cromwell's campaign in Ireland crushed his Royalist supporters there, he felt compelled to accept the Scottish terms and signed the Treaty of Breda on 1 May 1650. The Scottish Parliament set about rapidly recruiting an army to support the new king and Charles set sail to Scotland, landing on 23 June.
Scotland was actively rearming and the leaders of the English Commonwealth felt threatened. They pressured Thomas Fairfax, lord general of the New Model Army, to launch a preemptive attack. Fairfax accepted the commission to lead the army north to defend against the possibility of a Scottish invasion but was unwilling to strike the first blow against his former allies, believing that England and Scotland were still bound by the Solemn League and Covenant. When a formal order to attack came on 20 June, Fairfax resigned his commission. A parliamentary committee which included Cromwell, his close friend, attempted to dissuade him, pleading with him to change his mind, but Fairfax remained resolute and retired from public life. Cromwell succeeded to his office as lord general, becoming commander-in-chief of the New Model Army; he received his commission on 28 June and set out for Scotland the same day, crossing the Tweed on 22 July.
## Prelude
Once the Treaty of Breda had been signed, the Scottish Parliament started levying men to form a new army, under the command of David Leslie. Their aim was to increase their forces to 36,000 men, but that number was never achieved; by the time Cromwell entered Scotland, Leslie had some 8,000–9,500 infantry and 2,000–3,000 cavalry, although these numbers fluctuated during the course of the campaign. The government instituted a commission to purge the army of anyone suspected of having supported the Engagement, as well as other men considered sinful or undesirable. This was opposed, unsuccessfully, by much of the Scottish nobility and the experienced military leaders, including Leslie. This purge removed many experienced officers and the bulk of the army was composed of raw recruits with little training or experience.
Leslie prepared a defensive line of earthworks between Edinburgh and Leith, and employed a scorched earth policy between that line and the Borders. He then allowed Cromwell to advance unopposed. Lack of supplies and the hostility of the local people towards the English invaders, forced Cromwell to rely on a seaborne supply chain and he captured the ports of Dunbar and Musselburgh in order to facilitate this. Operations were hampered by persistent bad weather and the adverse conditions and a shortage of food caused much sickness in the English army, substantially reducing its strength.
Cromwell attempted to bring the Scots to battle at Edinburgh. He advanced on Leslie's lines on 29 July, capturing Arthur's Seat and bombarding Leith from Salisbury Crags. Cromwell was not able to draw Leslie out and the English retired for the night to Musselburgh; their rest was disturbed by a party of Scottish cavalry raiding their camp in the early hours. Cromwell's attack coincided with a visit by Charles II to the Scottish army, where he was warmly received. Members of the Covenanter government, concerned that their Godly war would be corrupted by feelings of personal loyalty to the King, asked Charles II to leave. They then ordered a new purge, which was quickly enacted in early August, removing 80 officers and 4,000 of Leslie's men, damaging morale as well as weakening the army's strength.
Throughout August Cromwell continued to try to draw the Scots out from their defences so as to enable a set piece battle. Leslie resisted, ignoring pressure from the secular and religious Scottish hierarchy to attack Cromwell's weakened army; he reasoned that the persistent bad weather, the difficult English supply situation and the dysentery and fever that had broken out in the English camp would force Cromwell to withdraw back into England before winter set in.
On 31 August Cromwell did withdraw; the English army reached Dunbar on 1 September, having taken two days to march the 17 miles (27 km) from Musselburgh, harassed day and night by the pursuing Scots. The road was left littered with abandoned equipment and the men arrived, according to one of their officers, Captain John Hodgson, as a "poor, shattered, hungry, discouraged army". The Scottish army outflanked the English, blocking the road to Berwick and England at the easily defended Cockburnspath Defile. Their main force encamped on the 177-metre-high (581 ft) Doon Hill, two miles (3.2 km) south of Dunbar, where it overlooked the town and the coastal road running south west from the town. The hill was all but invulnerable to direct assault. The English army had lost its freedom of manoeuvre, although they could supply themselves by sea and, if needs be, evacuate the army the same way. On 2 September Cromwell surveyed the situation and wrote to the governor of Newcastle warning him to prepare for a possible Scottish invasion:
> We are here upon an engagement very difficult. The enemy hath blocked up our way at the pass at Copperspath, through which we cannot get without almost a miracle. He lieth so upon the hills that we know not how to come that way without great difficulty; and our lying here daily consumeth our men who fall sick beyond imagination.
## Opposing forces
### Infantry
Infantry formations, equipment and tactics were similar in both armies, although the basic formation of the regiment varied greatly in size. An infantry regiment was composed of both musketeers and pikemen. The musketeers were armed with muskets possessing 4-foot-long (1.2 m) barrels and, mostly, matchlock firing mechanisms. These relied on the glowing end of a length of slow match, thin cord soaked in saltpetre, igniting the weapon's priming powder when the trigger was pulled. These were reliable and robust weapons, but their effectiveness was severely reduced in poor weather. In addition, keeping the slow match burning at all times resulted in the consumption of a vast amount, while dowsing it rendered the musket useless. Balancing combat readiness against logistical capability called for fine judgement from a regiment's officers. A small number of musketeers on each side were equipped with the more reliable flintlock muskets, known at the time as firelocks. In 1650 musketeer tactics were in the middle of a transition from firing one rank at a time so as to maintain a steady fire, to the entire unit discharging a volley simultaneously for shock effect.
Pikemen were equipped with pikes: long wooden shafts tipped with steel points. Pikes as issued in both armies were 18 feet (5.5 m) long, but on the march they were commonly cut down to a more wieldy 15 feet (4.6 m) or so. The pikemen carried basic swords and typically wore steel helmets but no other armour. Military manuals of the time suggested a ratio of two musketeers for each pikeman, but in practice commanders usually attempted to maximise the number of musketeers and a higher ratio was the rule.
Both armies organised their infantry regiments into brigades of three regiments each, which were typically deployed with two regiments abreast and the third behind as a reserve. Sometimes the two forward regiments of a brigade would amalgamate into a single larger battalia. The men in each unit would form up four or five ranks deep and in a relatively loose formation, with about 1 metre (3 ft 3.4 in) of frontage per file; so an infantry regiment of 600 might form up 120 men wide and 5 deep, giving it a frontage of 120 metres (390 ft) and a depth of 5 metres (16 ft). The pikemen would be placed in the centre of a formation, in a "stand", with the musketeers divided on each side. The usual tactic against infantry was for the musketeers to fire on their opponents and once it was thought that they had been sufficiently weakened or demoralised the stand of pikemen would advance, attempting to break through the enemy centre. This was known as a "push of the pike". The musketeers would also advance, engaging the enemy with their musket butts, which were steel-plated for this purpose and attempting to envelop the opposing formation.
Against cavalry, doctrine called for infantry units to tighten the spacing between their files to approximately 45 centimetres (18 in) per man and to advance steadily. To be effective against infantry, cavalry needed to break into their formation and if the men were packed together this was not possible. It was accepted that so long as the morale of the infantry held, cavalry could do little against the front of such a formation. However, the flanks and rear were increasingly vulnerable as the infantry packed more closely together, as this made manoeuvring or turning the unit more difficult.
### Cavalry
Most of the English cavalry were mounted on large, for the time, horses. The cavalrymen wore metal lobster-tailed pot helmets which protected the head and, usually, the neck, cheeks and, to an extent, face. They wore jackets of thick uncured leather and thigh-length boots. Body armour – a cuirass (metal chest and back plates) – was unusual but not unknown. They were each armed with two pistols and a sword. The pistols were 18 inches (46 cm) to 24 inches (61 cm) long and had a very limited effective range. Most but not all cavalry pistols had flintlock firing mechanisms, which were more reliable in damp or windy weather than matchlock mechanisms. Flintlock mechanisms were more expensive than matchlock ones and were usually reserved for the cavalry, who found igniting and using the slow match while controlling a horse inconvenient. The swords were straight, 3-foot-long (90 cm) and effective at both cutting and thrusting. Cavalry were usually positioned on each flank of the infantry.
The Scottish cavalry were similarly equipped, with helmets, pistols, swords and no body armour, although their front ranks bore lances rather than pistols. The main difference was that the Scottish horses were smaller and lighter; this gave them greater manoeuvrability but put them at a disadvantage in a face-to-face confrontation. English cavalry tactics were intended to utilise their strengths. They would advance in a tight formation, with their riders' legs interlocked, at no faster than a trot – in order to maintain formation. They would discharge their pistols at very short range and upon coming into contact attempt to use the sheer weight of their mounts and the mass of their formation to force back their opponents and burst through their ranks.
Both armies contained a number of dragoons. These had originated as mounted infantry, using horses to increase their operational mobility and dismounting to fight with pikes or muskets. By 1650 they had largely become specialist mounted troops; none carried pikes. The English dragoons had exchanged their muskets for carbines (shorter-barrelled versions of the infantry's muskets) or, occasionally, pistols and been formally recognised as a cavalry arm. Scottish dragoons were partway through this transformation and carried both matchlock muskets and cavalry swords. Dragoons usually acted as scouts, or formed their army's rearguard.
### Artillery
The English army possessed about a dozen heavy guns used for sieges which played no part in the battle. The field artillery of both armies, of a variety of calibres from 3 to 20 pounds (1.4 to 9 kg), was immobile once positioned – where wheeled carriages were provided the wheels were removed before firing. Usually, the guns were allocated two or three to each regiment, to provide direct support, but for this battle, Cromwell massed all of his field artillery in one group. The Scottish artillery was even less mobile than the English and most of it played no part due to the way the battle developed, but a few of the lighter Scottish pieces, attached to individual regiments, saw action. Each gun was served by three crew, although there were a large number of additional auxiliary and supernumerary men in the artillery trains.
### Numbers
All of the Scottish units were well under their notional complements. There were 22 Scottish infantry regiments present, each with an establishment of about 750 men, but many had been amalgamated due to their low strengths. Only 15 composite formations took part in the battle. They averaged fewer than 700 men each for a total of approximately 9,500 according to Stuart Reid, or 8,000–9,000 according to Richard Brooks. The Scots fielded 19 small cavalry regiments, with a notional aggregate strength of 4,500; in fact they probably totalled fewer than 3,000.
The New Model Army mustered on 22 July 1650, immediately prior to crossing into Scotland. The 8 infantry regiments, notionally of 1,200 men each, totalled 10,249. Their 7 cavalry regiments and several ancillary mounted units were slightly above their complement of 5,400. The artillery component numbered 640, giving the English a total of 16,289 fighting men at this point. By the day of the battle this total had been seriously depleted. The English navy had taken off some 2,000 sick men and an unknown number had died. A proportion of the remainder were ill: Reid gives the total of English lost through sickness since the start of the campaign as 4,000–5,000 and reckons that there were "upwards of 1,000 sick still with the army". All of those who could would have joined their regiments for the battle. Cromwell states that "as to sound men [...] about 7,500 foot and 3,500 horse", while the modern historian Trevor Royle estimates that a little over 12,000 were fit for action; Reid gives 12,080.
In addition both sides fielded a number of artillery pieces, but details of the number and calibres have not survived other than that the English had 22 field and siege guns with only the field guns taking part in the battle; and the Scots a total of 32 with most not firing during the action.
## Battle
### Preparation
The position of the Scottish army on Doon Hill was tactically sound but would cause logistical problems. So far in the campaign the Scots had experienced difficulty in feeding their army and the small, muddy tracks from Edinburgh could not provide the army with food and slow match for more than a few days. More immediately, the weather was foul and Doon Hill was fully exposed to it. The Scottish position was not sustainable and on 2 September they held a council of war to debate what to do. There is no record of the discussion, nor certainty as to the attendees and survivors gave differing accounts. A number of clerics, plus the government's leading lawyer, Archibald Johnston of Wariston, were present and they were enthusiastic for pressing the English hard. Royle, among others, has pointed out that the idea that Leslie was pressured into leaving the security of Doon Hill due to amateur advice from the Covenanter clerics is a myth. Leslie's experienced military lieutenants were unanimous that the Scots had the English at a disadvantage and that they should advance against them.
On 2 September the Scots moved off the exposed ridge of Doon Hill. This took most of the day. The English army in turn advanced out of Dunbar and took up defensive positions along the steep north bank of the Brox Burn stream, which roughly paralleled the Doon Hill ridge. From Brand's Mill westward this burn formed a significant obstacle against attack for both sides. Both Leslie and Cromwell concentrated their cavalry on the seaward side of Brand's Mill, where the Brox Burn was more readily traversable. Leslie deployed much of his light artillery with his cavalry and attempted to also move his infantry to the east. The rough ground and the limited room to manoeuvre between the Brox Burn and the steep northern slope of Doon Hill hampered this and it was incomplete when halted by nightfall.
Cromwell intended to launch a dawn assault against the Scots on 3 September, but the objective of the attack has been debated by historians. After the event Cromwell claimed that the Scots moving down off Doon Hill had presented him with the long-sought opportunity for an open battle which he was quick to seize. The historians Reid and Malcolm Wanklyn believe that Cromwell was attempting to break out and escape along the coast road to England. Reid cites the movement of the baggage train from Dunbar churchyard to Broxmouth House as one indication. This position, in the front line of the army, was, says Reid, "a most extraordinary place" for the baggage train, only explicable by its nearness to the road which would have enabled it to move off promptly if the way could be opened. The alternative view is that Cromwell always planned an all-out assault and a decisive battle; Peter Reese is a proponent, although he states that "the odds against the English ... were awesome".
In the adverse weather conditions it took the English army all night to reposition in preparation for the planned pre-dawn assault. At about 10:00 pm on 2 September English dragoons probed the Scottish positions. The whole Scottish army stood-to and the English withdrew slightly, maintaining patrols to try to ensure that the Scots were unaware of the manoeuvres going on behind them. The Scottish soldier John Nicholl described "a drakie nycht full of wind and weit" (a dark night full of wind and wet) and many Scottish soldiers attempted to shelter in the corn stooks. Their officers scattered across the countryside in search of sounder shelter, their cavalry went foraging and unsaddled most of their horses and Major General James Holborne ordered that the musketeers should extinguish their slow match except for two men per company.
By around 4:00 am the English troops had reached positions approximately where Cromwell intended them to be; none of them had made the mistake in the dark of going too far and alerting the Scots to their manoeuvres. John Lambert's brigade of three cavalry regiments was positioned abreast of the road; Robert Lilburne's brigade of a further three cavalry regiments was positioned behind it. Thomas Pride's infantry brigade of three infantry regiments was to the north west of the cavalry, ready to cross the Brox Burn further downstream at Broxmouth. George Monck, with a slightly smaller force than Pride, was south of the cavalry, in position to cross the Brox Burn upstream of the road ford at Brand's Mill. Behind all of these, held in reserve, was Cromwell's own Lord General's Regiment, reinforced by two companies of dragoons. A little upstream of Brand's Mill the English field artillery had set up on a prominent spur where it had a good field of fire into the centre of the Scottish army. To the south west of this concentration Robert Overton's three infantry regiments faced the three infantry brigades of the Scottish centre and left. Four companies of dragoons were dispersed in strong pickets along the north bank of the Brox Burn in front of Overton's brigade and extending to its right (west).
The Scots were in a conventional line abreast with nearly all of their cavalry concentrated on their right (east) flank. On the extreme left was a force of about 500 cavalry commanded by William Stewart. Next was the Scottish infantry organised in five brigades. These were, from their left (west): 2,000 men under James Holborne; 1,600 men under Colin Pitscottie; John Innes' brigade of 1,200–1,500; about 2,000 men commanded by James Lumsden; and, facing Brand's Mill, James Campbell of Lawers' 2,000 men. Astride the road and stretching north across the coastal plain were two strong forces of cavalry, totalling approximately 2,500 men, one behind the other. The leading (western) formation was commanded by Robert Montgomerie and the second line by Archibald Strachan. The camp of a small force of dragoons under John Douglas was to the rear of the cavalry, but it is not clear to what extent these troops had been disposed forward as pickets on the night of the battle.
### Night attack
#### Initial assault
At approximately 4:00 am on 3 September English cavalry advanced to clear the Scottish pickets from the three militarily practicable crossing points of the Brox Burn: Brand's Mill, the road ford and north of Broxmouth House. The pickets were driven back and a confused firefight broke out. The rain ceased and the cloud briefly cleared allowing moonlight to illuminate the scene. The artillery of both sides opened fire, although it is not known to what effect. At the first hint of dawn, just after 5:00 am with sunrise at 5:33 am, Lambert's cavalry brigade crossed the Brox Burn at the road ford and formed up on the other side unmolested. The English mounts were in good condition and the three regiments advanced in their usual tight formation. Despite the activity during the night, the forward formation of Scottish cavalry was not prepared for action and its commander, Montgomerie, was probably not present. The Scots were taken by surprise, some were still in their tents and they were scattered by the English.
At around the same time Monck pushed his infantry brigade across the Brox Burn at Brand's Mill and attacked Lumsden's brigade of Scottish infantry. Despite having been engaged when the Brand's Ford pickets were driven in shortly before, Lumsden's men were in disarray. Reese reports that many of them were new recruits who had only recently joined the brigade. Reid suggests the inexperienced musketeers may have used all of their ammunition during the earlier firefight. Monck's musketeers delivered two volleys, receiving little fire in return and charged home alongside their pikemen. The fire of the English field guns enfiladed the Scottish line. There are conflicting and sometimes confused accounts of what happened next. Reid has the Scottish brigade shattering after an ineffectual struggle; Monck's troops pursued but were then caught by a counterattack from the next Scottish brigade in line – Lawers' – driven back and "completely knocked out of the fight". According to Reese, Lumsden's regiments maintained their cohesion and, reinforced by troops from Lawers' Brigade, drove Monck back by weight of numbers. Brooks agrees with Reid that Monck's men were "overpowered".
Meanwhile, Lambert's cavalry charge came to a halt among the tents of the Scottish cavalrymen, with its formation disordered after pursuing the broken Scottish first line cavalry. As they were regrouping they were charged by Strachan's second line cavalry and forced back. Reese points out that it was near dawn, cloudy, misty, there were occasional heavy showers and that great clouds of smoke from cannon and musket fire were drifting across the battlefield: the cumulative effect would have been to greatly restrict visibility and situation awareness. Simultaneously, Lilburne's brigade of a further three cavalry regiments had crossed the Brox Burn, formed up and moved to reinforce Lambert. The fighting seems to have broken down into a series of actions scattered across the coastal plain, with the focus slowly moving to the east.
Pride's Brigade of three English infantry regiments crossed the Brox Burn north of Broxmouth, wheeled right and marched south, behind the ongoing cavalry melee and reinforced Monck's Brigade which was being forced back by the Scottish infantry of Lawers' Brigade and, possibly, Lumsden's. In the confusion Pride's regiments came into action piecemeal and the leftmost (Lambert's) only engaged stragglers in the vicinity of Little Pinkerton. Leslie had three uncommitted infantry brigades, but they were squeezed between the steep slope of Doon Hill and the Brox Burn and were unable to engage. Cromwell had only his reserve cavalry, the reinforced Lord General's Regiment, in hand. The extent to which either commander was aware of the situation on the field is uncertain. According to Hodgson "horse and foot were engaged all over the field". The battle hung in the balance.
#### Outflanking manoeuvre
As with other aspects of the battle, the sources differ regarding what happened next. Reid and Royle separately write that the Lord General's Regiment, led by William Packer, crossed the Brox Burn north of Broxmouth, either alongside or behind Pride's Brigade. It then marched south east, got between the sprawling cavalry battle and the coast, on the Scots' right flank, charged them and set the whole Scottish cavalry force to flight. Wanklyn agrees with this general point but states that it was Pride's infantry brigade that led the flank charge. Cromwell and Lambert prevented a pursuit and surveyed the situation while the English cavalry reorganised. At this point the cavalry troopers sang "Psalm 117". Cromwell ordered his cavalry to the north west, where the infantry struggle was taking place and a unit charged Lawers' troops in their right flank and their formation collapsed. Hodgson wrote that Lawers' Brigade "would not yield though at push of pike and butt-end of musket until a troop of horse charged from one end [flank] to another of them".
In contrast, Reese's account has the Lord General's Regiment, under Cromwell's personal control, following Pride's Brigade across the rear of the cavalry battle and deploying to its left (south). From there Cromwell personally directed them into the exposed flank of Lawers' Brigade at about 7:00 am with the same effect noted above. Meanwhile, the English cavalry gradually got the better of their Scottish counterparts, who broke and scattered. The English cavalry rallied and moved in the general direction of Little Pinkerton.
According to English accounts, Scottish resistance collapsed at this point, with the unengaged Scottish brigades throwing down their weapons and fleeing. Reid points out that as many of the Scottish regiments concerned were fighting again as coherent forces not long after the battle, their withdrawal may have been less panic-stricken than the English recounted. He suggests that Leslie may have been moving the left and centre of his army off the field before Lawers' resistance collapsed. Holborne's and Innes' Brigades crossed the Brox Burn near what is now Doon Bridge (the bridge did not exist at the time) and withdrew to the east in good order, shielded by Stewart's small brigade of cavalry. Pitscottie's Brigade covered their retreat and while two of its regiments escaped with few losses, one – Wedderburn's – was all but wiped out; presumably while gaining the time needed for the other surviving Scots to escape. The Scottish cavalry holding Cockburnspath Defile withdrew and joined the defeated Scottish cavalry from their right wing. They rode a wide loop south and then west of Doon Hill and rejoined Leslie's main force as it withdrew towards their forward base at Haddington, 8 miles (13 km) to the west of the battlefield.
## Aftermath
### Casualties
Sources differ as to Scottish casualties. Cromwell gives figures in his contemporaneous correspondence for the strength of the Scottish army based on all of its units being at full strength and claims to have "killed near four thousand" and captured 10,000 Scots. In Cromwell's letters he states that the day after the battle he released between 4,000 and 5,000 of the prisoners. Several modern secondary sources accept these figures; although others dismiss them, with Reid describing them as absurd. The Scottish annalist James Balfour recorded "8 or 900 killed". The English Royalist Edward Walker has 6,000 prisoners being taken and 1,000 of them being released. From Walker's account Reid calculates that fewer than 300 Scots were killed. Brooks uses the known number of Scots wounded, approximately 1,000, to estimate their dead at 300–500. All accounts agree that approximately 5,000 Scottish prisoners were marched south and that 4,000–5,000 Scots survived to retreat towards Edinburgh; over half of them formed bodies of infantry and the balance cavalry or stragglers. English casualties were low, with Cromwell variously giving them as "not twenty men" or 30–40 killed.
The prisoners were taken to England and 3,000 were imprisoned at Durham Cathedral; many died on the march south, or in captivity. In September 2015 archaeologists announced that skeletons found in mass graves near Durham Cathedral were the remains of Scottish soldiers taken prisoner after the battle. The archaeological evidence appeared to show that the bodies had been tipped into a mass grave with no signs of ceremony. At least some of those who survived were deported to become indentured workers on English possessions overseas.
### Scottish response
When the Scottish government learned of the defeat many people fled Edinburgh in panic, but Leslie sought to rally what remained of his army and build a new defensive line at Stirling, where he was joined by the bulk of the government, clergy and Edinburgh's mercantile elite. Cromwell dispatched Lambert to capture Edinburgh, while he marched on the port of Leith, which offered much better facilities for landing supplies and reinforcements than Dunbar. Without Leslie's army to defend them, both were captured with little difficulty. Cromwell took pains to persuade the citizens that his war was not with them; he promised that their property would be respected and allowed them to come and go freely, hold markets and observe their usual religious services, although the latter was restricted as most of the clergy had removed to Stirling. He also took steps to secure food for the city, which by this point was short on supplies. Edinburgh Castle held out until December, but since it was cut off from reinforcement and supplies and offered no threat, Cromwell did not assault it and treated its commander with courtesy. The historian Austin Woolrych described the behaviour of the occupying troops as "exemplary" and observed that after a short time many fugitives returned to the city and its economic life returned to something akin to normality.
The defeat at Dunbar caused great damage to Leslie's reputation and authority. He attempted to resign as head of the army, but the Scottish government would not permit it, largely because of a lack of any plausible replacement. Several of his officers, however, refused to take orders from him, left Leslie's forces and joined a new army that was being raised by the Western Association.
Divisions already present in the Scottish government were widened by the new situation. The more practical faction believed that the purges were to blame for Leslie's defeat and looked to bring the Engagers back into the fold; the more dogmatic thought that God had deserted them because the purges had not gone far enough and argued that too much faith had been put in Charles II who was not sufficiently committed to the cause of the Covenant. These more radical elements issued the divisive Western Remonstrance, which castigated the government for its failure to properly purge the army and further widened the rifts amongst the Scots. The Remonstrants, as this group became known, took command of the Western Association army and attempted to negotiate with Cromwell, urging him to depart Scotland and leave them in control; Cromwell rejected their advances and destroyed their army at the Battle of Hieton (near the centre of modern Hamilton) on 1 December.
During December Charles and the Scottish government started to draw together what remained of Leslie's forces, as well as the Engagers who had been purged from it and Highland chiefs who had been excluded by their refusal to sign the Covenant. These competing factions were poorly coordinated and even when Cromwell fell ill in early 1651 and was unable to take to the field, they were unable to take effective action. It was not until the late spring of that year that the Scots were able to piece their army together.
### English conquest
A breakthrough was made when English forces, commanded by Lambert, managed to land in Fife and, on 20 July, capture Inverkeithing. This allowed the English army to threaten both Stirling and Perth, while Leslie's men, faced with impending total defeat, started to desert in great numbers. Confident that he would be able to defeat what remained of the Scottish forces, Cromwell, by now returned to health, deliberately left the path from Stirling to England undefended. Charles II and Leslie, presented with little other option if they were not to surrender, went south on 31 July in a desperate bid to raise Royalist support in England. By this time they had only around 12,000 men, who were very short of firearms. They attempted to muster what Royalist support they could on their march through England, but little was forthcoming.
With Leslie and the army gone, Scotland was exposed to the English forces: the Scottish government, now in Perth, surrendered to Cromwell two days after Charles and Leslie left Stirling. Cromwell and Lambert then went south, to shadow the Scottish army, leaving Monck to mop up what little resistance remained. By the end of August, Monck had captured Stirling, Alyth and St Andrews. Dundee, the last significant Scottish stronghold, fell on 1 September.
Cromwell and his forces overtook the Scottish army at Worcester and on 3 September 1651 utterly defeated them. Leslie, along with most of the Royalist commanders, was captured; he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and would remain there until the 1660 Restoration. Charles II himself managed to escape the field. The historian Barry Coward wrote "It was a divided enemy that Cromwell fought after Dunbar and decisively defeated at Worcester, exactly a year after Dunbar." The Scottish Covenanter government was abolished and the English commanders imposed military rule.
## Dunbar medal
Parliament had a medal struck for the combatants, in gold for officers and silver for men. It has been claimed to be the first campaign medal to be granted to all ranks of an army and was worn by a cord or chain around the neck. Thomas Simon was dispatched to Edinburgh to create the Lord General's likeness. The medal shows a profile head of Cromwell and the army's battle cry on the day, "The Lord of Hosts" and on the other face a view of Parliament.
## Battlefield today
The battle has traditionally been known as the Battle of Dunbar after the closest parish to the area where the fighting took place, but at least one contemporary source refers to it as the Battle of Broxmouth, after another nearby settlement. The locations which saw action have been designated by Historic Environment Scotland in its Inventory of Historic Battlefields as a battlefield of national importance. The areas covered by the designation include: the summit and slopes of Doon Hill, where the Scots were initially deployed; Broxmouth House and its grounds and the southern part of Dunbar, where the English forces were encamped; the Brox Burn and lands around it, as the general location of the main battle; and Meikle Pinkerton Farm and the lands around it, where the Scottish right flank was deployed. Quarrying in the eastern part of the battlefield, which started in the early 19th century and continues today, has destroyed much of the landscape that was present in 1650 and further damage has been done by the construction of the Main Line railway and the A1 road, but a significant portion of the original landscape survives intact within the grounds of Broxburn House. The location of the English camp has probably been lost beneath the urban development of Dunbar. No artefacts from the battle are known to have been discovered, but Historic Environment Scotland considers it likely that shot and graves may be discovered there by future investigations; the only grave associated with the battle known to exist at the site is that of Sir William Douglas in the grounds of Broxmouth House.
## Notes, citations and sources
|
334,327 |
Common firecrest
| 1,170,040,904 |
Very small passerine bird from Europe and northwest Africa
|
[
"Birds described in 1820",
"Birds of Europe",
"Regulus (bird)",
"Taxa named by Coenraad Jacob Temminck"
] |
The common firecrest (Regulus ignicapilla), also known as the firecrest, is a very small passerine bird in the kinglet family. It breeds in most of temperate Europe and northwestern Africa, and is partially migratory, with birds from central Europe wintering to the south and west of their breeding range. Firecrests in the Balearic Islands and north Africa are widely recognised as a separate subspecies, but the population on Madeira, previously also treated as a subspecies, is now treated as a distinct species, the Madeira firecrest, Regulus madeirensis. A fossil ancestor of the firecrest has been identified from a single wing bone.
This kinglet is greenish above and has whitish underparts. It has two white wingbars, a black eye stripe and a white supercilium. The head crest, orange in the male and yellow in the female, is displayed during breeding, and gives rise to the English and scientific names for the species. This bird superficially resembles the goldcrest, which largely shares its European range, but the firecrest's bronze shoulders and strong face pattern are distinctive. The song is a repetition of high thin notes, slightly lower-pitched than those of its relative.
The common firecrest breeds in broadleaved or coniferous woodland and gardens, building its compact, three-layered nest on a tree branch. Seven to twelve eggs are incubated by the female alone. Both parents feed the chicks, which fledge 22–24 days after hatching. This kinglet is constantly on the move and frequently hovers as it searches for insects to eat, and in winter it is often found with flocks of tits. Despite some possible local declines, the species is not the subject of significant conservation concerns owing to its large European population and an expansion of its range over the last century. It may be hunted and killed by birds of prey, and can carry parasites. It is possible that this species was the original "king of the birds" in European folklore.
## Description
The common firecrest is a small plump bird, 9 cm (3.5 in) in length with a wingspan of 13–16 cm (5.1–6.3 in), and weighs 4–7 grams (0.14–0.25 oz). It has bright olive-green upperparts with a bronze-coloured patch on each shoulder, and whitish underparts washed with brownish-grey on the breast and flanks. It has two white wingbars, a tiny black pointed bill, and brownish-black legs. The head pattern is striking, with a black eye stripe, long white supercilium, and a crest which is bright yellow in the female and mainly orange in the male. The sexes are very similar, apart from the crest colour, although the female is a little duller in plumage and on average slightly smaller. Juveniles have a grey tinge to the duller upperparts, and lack the coloured crown; the other head markings are present, but duller than in the adult. By their first winter, only the flight and tail feathers remain unmoulted, and the young birds are virtually indistinguishable from the adults in the field. This kinglet usually hops with its body held horizontally, and its flight is weak and whirring, with occasional quick evasive turns.
Adult firecrests are unlikely to be confused with any other species; Pallas's warbler has a similar head and wing pattern, but its crown stripe is pale lemon, not bright yellow or orange, and its supercilium is also pale yellow, not bright white. The juvenile common firecrest might be confused with the goldcrest, but usually shows enough face pattern to distinguish it from its relative, which has a very plain face at all ages. The firecrest can also be separated from Pallas's warbler by the warbler's pale crown stripe and yellow rump. There is more likelihood of confusing the juvenile firecrest with the yellow-browed warbler, which has a similar head pattern; the warbler (an Asiatic species) has pale fringes to the feathers of the closed wing, a whitish belly and darker brown legs. The yellow-browed warbler also lacks the pale half circle present below the young firecrest's eye.
## Taxonomy and systematics
The kinglets are a small group of birds sometimes included in the Old World warblers, but frequently given family status, especially as recent research shows that, despite superficial similarities, the crests are phylogenetically remote from the warblers. The names of the family Regulidae, and the genus Regulus, are derived from the Latin regulus, a diminutive of rex, "a king", and refer to the characteristic orange or yellow crests of adult kinglets. The common firecrest was first formally described by Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck in 1820 as Sylvia ignicapilla; the relatively late identification of this common European bird arose from a perception that it was just a variety of the goldcrest. The species name is derived from Latin ignis "fire" and capillus "hair". The binomial is frequently given as R. ignicapillus due to a misunderstanding of Latin grammar.
There are two widely recognised subspecies of common firecrest, nominate R. i. ignicapilla and Mediterranean R. i. balearicus (Jordans, 1923). The latter form is found on the Balearic Islands and in north Africa, and is slightly paler below and greyer above than the nominate subspecies. Other subspecies have been claimed, including southeastern R. i. caucasicus, North African R. i. laeneni, and Crimean R. i. tauricus. The Madeira firecrest, R. madeirensis, was formerly also considered to be a subspecies of the common firecrest, but phylogenetic analysis based on the cytochrome b gene showed that the Madeiran form is distinct at the species level. Cytochrome b gene divergence between the Madeira firecrest and the European bird is 8.5%, comparable with the divergence level between other recognised Regulus species, such as the 9% between the goldcrest and the golden-crowned kinglet. The island form also differs in morphology and vocalisations. The proposed split was accepted by the Association of European Rarities Committees (AERC) in 2003, with most other authorities also splitting it later on.
The flamecrest or Taiwan firecrest (Regulus goodfellowi) of Taiwan has sometimes been viewed as a race of the common firecrest; however, the flamecrest's territorial song, which resembles those of the Himalayan races of the goldcrest, and genetic data indicate that the flamecrest is closely related to the Himalayan goldcrest and only distantly to the two firecrest species. The kinglets on the Canary Islands, which were also considered to be close to firecrests, have now been shown to comprise two subspecies of goldcrest.
### Fossils
There are a few Pleistocene (2.6 million to 12,000 years ago) records from Europe and Israel of extant Regulus species, mostly goldcrests or unidentifiable to species, but also a Spanish specimen of firecrest. A left ulna from Bulgaria was identified as belonging to a fossil species, Regulus bulgaricus, from 2.6–1.95 mya. This appears to be ancestral to the common firecrest, with the goldcrest diverging from this lineage in the Middle Pleistocene.
## Distribution and habitat
The common firecrest breeds in lowland broadleaf forest, preferring cork oak and alder where available, otherwise beech and holly. It also uses mixed broadleaf and conifer woodland, and stands of spruce, European silver fir, cedar and pines, often with undergrowth of juniper, ivy and wild rose. In drier Mediterranean habitats it is found in conifers, evergreen oak, and mixed woodlands up to 2,800 m (9,200 ft). Unlike more specialised birds such as Eurasian nuthatch and common treecreeper, both of which forage on trunks, the crests do not need large woodlands, and their population density is independent of forest size. In winter it is less reliant on conifers than the goldcrest, moving from forest to fringes and scrub. It occurs singly or in pairs, spending much time in the tree canopy, although frequently venturing into bushes and other lower vegetation. This species can thrive in fairly urban areas, provided that suitable habitat is available in parks or large gardens; population densities in gardens can be comparable with the maximum levels found in natural habitats.
The nominate subspecies breeds in Europe from southern England, France, Spain and Portugal east to Belarus, northwestern Ukraine, and Greece, and north to the Baltic and southern Latvia. There are isolated populations east of the main range in Abkhazia, the Crimea and Turkey. Its range lies between the 16 and 24 °C (61 and 75 °F) July isotherms. Southern birds are largely resident, unlike northern and eastern populations which are migratory, wintering mainly in Mediterranean areas and the far west of Europe from Portugal north to Britain. R. i. balearicus is resident in the Balearic Islands and the northern parts of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. This species has been recorded as a vagrant from Norway, Finland, Estonia, Cyprus, Egypt and Lebanon. In July 2020, it was reported that the common firecrest was now nesting in at least two locations in southern Finland.
## Behaviour and ecology
### Breeding
The common firecrest is monogamous. The male sings during the breeding season, often with its crest raised, and has a display which involves pointing its bill at another bird, showing the crest and strong face pattern. This differs from the display of the plainer-faced goldcrest, which bows its head to emphasise the crest. The breeding territory is about 0.5 hectares (1.2 acres), and may overlap with neighbouring goldcrest territories. Firecrests will sometimes defend their territories against goldcrests with the crest raised and a great deal of wing-fluttering, but the amount of actual competition between the species may not be very great. A Spanish study suggested that territorial conflicts between the species, and other phenomena like males singing mixed or alternating songs, were most frequent when one species locally far outnumbered the other; in other circumstances, the two kinglets learned to ignore each other's songs. In his courtship display the male firecrest raises his crest, points it towards his mate and hovers over her before mating takes place.
The nest is often suspended from a hanging branch usually at no great altitude, although Eric Simms reported nests at heights from 2.5 to 20 m (8.2 to 65.6 ft). Firecrests may favour breeding close to northern goshawk nests. That large bird will prey on potential predators of the firecrest such as Eurasian sparrowhawks, and nest robbers like grey squirrels, Eurasian jays and great spotted woodpeckers. As is typical for the family, the nest is a closed cup built in three layers with a small entrance hole near its top. The nest's outer layer is made from moss, small twigs, cobwebs and lichen, the spider webs also being used to attach the nest to the thin branches that support it. The middle layer is moss, and this is lined with feathers (up to 3,000) and hair. The nest is smaller, deeper and more compact than that of the goldcrest, about 8 cm (3.1 in) across and 5–7 cm (2.0–2.8 in) deep, with a wall thickness of about 2 cm (0.79 in). The nest is constructed by the female alone, although the male will accompany the female while she builds the nest over a period of a few days to three weeks.
Laying starts in western Europe at the end of April, and in the east of the range in late May; second clutches, which are common, commence in June to July. The eggs are pink with very indistinct reddish markings at the broad end, unlike those of Madeira firecrest which are described as like those of a Phylloscopus warbler (white with some brown speckles). The eggs are 14 mm × 10 mm (0.55 in × 0.39 in) and weigh 0.7 g (0.025 oz), of which 5% is shell. The clutch size in Europe is 7–12 eggs, but probably smaller in northwest Africa. The female incubates the eggs for 14.5 to 16.5 days to hatching, and broods the chicks, which fledge eight to ten days later. Both parents feed the chicks and fledged young. This species becomes sexually mature after one year, and has a life expectancy of less than two years.
Although their ranges overlap substantially, hybridisation between goldcrests and firecrests seems to be prevented by differences in courtship rituals and different facial patterns. Even in aviary studies in which a female goldcrest was given an artificial eyestripe to facilitate mating with a male firecrest, the chicks were never raised by the mixed pair, and appeared to be poorly adapted compared to the parent species.
### Feeding
All species of kinglet are almost exclusively insectivorous, preying on small arthropods with soft cuticles, such as springtails, aphids and spiders. They also feed on the cocoons and eggs of spiders and insects, and occasionally take pollen. All species will hover to catch flying insects. Although the similarly sized firecrest and goldcrest are often found together, there are a number of factors that reduce direct competition for food. Common firecrests prefer larger prey than goldcrests. Although both will take trapped insects from spider webs on autumn migration, firecrests will also eat the large orb-web spiders (on rare occasions kinglets have been found stuck in a spider web, either unable to move or dead).
The common firecrest feeds in trees, exploiting mainly the upper surface of branches in coniferous habitat and of leaves in deciduous trees. This is in contrast to the goldcrest, which frequently feeds on the undersides of branches and leaves. In winter, flocks of common firecrests cover a given distance about three times faster than do goldcrests, and ignore the smallest prey items preferred by their relative; large invertebrates are killed by beating them repeatedly against a branch. The differences in behaviour are facilitated by subtle morphological differences; firecrests have broader bills with longer rictal bristles (which protect a bird's eye from food items it is trying to capture), and these features reflect the larger prey taken by the species. The firecrest's less forked tail may reflect its longer episodes of hovering while hunting. Firecrests forage more often while standing, and have a foot better adapted for perching, whereas the goldcrest's longer hind toe reflects its habit of moving vertically along branches while feeding. It also has a deep grooves in the soles of its feet capable of gripping individual needles, while firecrests have a smoother underside to the foot.
Young common firecrests are fed almost exclusively with springtails; larger food items are not accepted, and spiders are occasionally regurgitated. From the fifth day onwards, the nestling diet includes aphids and a high amount of snail shells, the latter being needed for bone growth. After the second week, the food includes larger moths and caterpillars, as well as various arthropods typically avoided by adults, such as harvestmen, earwigs, and centipedes.
In winter, the firecrest joins loose flocks of other wanderers such as tits and warblers. This kinglet, like other species that prefer mixed-species foraging flocks in winter, hunts over a greater range of heights and vegetation types than when feeding alone. For species that tend to feed in flocks, foraging success while in a flock was about twice that for solitary birds. In some areas, wintering birds have developed the habit of coming to feeding stations and bird tables for fatty food, sometimes with goldcrests or warblers such as the common chiffchaff and blackcap. The kinglet's digestive system is adapted to an entirely insectivorous diet, whereas Sylvia warblers include fruit in their autumn diet. A Spanish study compared that genus with the insectivorous firecrest and Phylloscopus warblers. The results showed that, relative to body weight, the insect-eaters had shorter intestines, but longer gut passage times than the Sylvia species. The insect-eaters are also generally slightly smaller than the omnivores.
### Voice
The contact call is three or four thin high notes, similar to that of goldcrest, but slightly lower in pitch, zit-zit-zit rather than see-see-see. The song is a succession of call notes in a longer and slightly more varied sequence. Typically there are 11–14 notes per song, becoming louder and faster, with the final three notes slightly different from the preceding ones: zit-zit-zit-zit-zit-zit-zit-zit-zit-zit-zirt.zirt.zirt. The song usually lasts 0.5–2.5 seconds, shorter than the 3.5–4.0 seconds for the goldcrest, and may be repeated up to eight times a minute. In May and June, singing is most frequent after dawn, but continues less often throughout the day. Later in the breeding season, song becomes largely confined to the morning.
The song of the Mediterranean subspecies of common firecrest, R. i. balearicus, is very similar to that of the nominate form, but one factor in separating the Madeiran firecrest from common firecrest is that the island bird's song is divided into three phrases, two of them consisting of modified display and anger calls. Its display calls also use a larger frequency range and more harmonics than those of the continental subspecies. Male goldcrests and Madeiran firecrests sometimes show a territorial response to recordings of the songs or calls of the common firecrest, but the reverse is apparently not true, because the songs of the common firecrest are simpler in construction than those of its relatives.
### Predators and parasites
Throughout the firecrest's range, the main predator of small woodland birds is the Eurasian sparrowhawk, which takes avian prey as up to 98% of its diet. The tawny owl relies more on mammalian catches, but about one-third of its food is forest birds. Eggs and young may be taken by grey squirrels, Eurasian jays and great spotted woodpeckers. The firecrest appears to be virtually unknown as a host of the common cuckoo, a widespread European brood parasite.
The invasive Argentine ant (Linepithema humile) is common in the Mediterranean area, and reduces arthropod numbers by removing most native ant species. The reduction in prey items is greatest in the tree canopy, and has a greater effect on species like the firecrest that feed high in the foliage. Less food is available for chicks, and parents have to spend more time foraging.
Data on specific parasites of the firecrest is lacking, but the widespread moorhen flea, Dasypsyllus gallinulae has been recorded in a related Regulus species. A number of feather mites have been recorded in the genus, including Proctophyllodes glandarinus on firecrest. These mites live on fungi growing on the feathers. The fungi found on the plumage may feed on the keratin of the outer feathers or on feather oil.
## Status
The common firecrest expanded its range in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, colonising northern France, followed by first breeding in the Netherlands in 1928 and Denmark in 1961. In Britain, it had only been recorded a handful of times by 1839, but first bred in 1962, and is now widespread as a breeding bird in much of southern England. Milder winters have meant that more birds can winter further north, and therefore the breeding range can expand without incurring the risks involved in lengthy migrations. A population was found in northern Morocco in 1986.
Population growth may be limited by lack of suitable habitat, and there may be local declines due to loss of conifers through storms or replacement by plantations of native deciduous trees. There may also be localised losses in areas of high heavy metal pollution, which particularly affects ground feeders like thrushes and conifer foliage gleaners, including both European Regulus species. Conifer specialists suffer from the loss and poor quality of needles, and the consequent decrease in abundance of their invertebrate food. The common firecrest has a large range and a population estimated at 10–15 million individuals, most in Europe. The population is believed to be stable in the absence of evidence for any declines or serious threats, and it is therefore classed as least concern on the IUCN Red List.
## In culture
Aristotle and Pliny relate the legend of a contest amongst the birds to see who should be their king, the title to be awarded to the one that could fly highest. Initially, it looked as though the eagle would win easily, but as he began to tire, a small bird which had hidden under the eagle's tail feathers emerged to fly even higher and claimed the title. Following from this legend, in much European folklore the wren has been described as the "king of the birds" or as a flame bearer. However, these terms were also applied to the Regulus species, the fiery crowns of the goldcrest and firecrest making them more likely to be the original bearers of these titles, and, because of the legend's reference to the "smallest of birds" becoming king, the title was probably transferred to the equally tiny wren. The confusion was assisted by the similarity and consequent interchangeability of the Ancient Greek words for the wren (βασιλεύς basileus, "king") and the crest (βασιλισκος basiliskos, "kinglet"). In English, the association between the firecrest and Eurasian wren was reinforced by the kinglet's old name of "fire-crested wren".
|
30,978 |
Tool (band)
| 1,173,241,721 |
American rock band
|
[
"1990 establishments in California",
"American alternative metal musical groups",
"American art rock groups",
"American post-metal musical groups",
"American progressive metal musical groups",
"Grammy Award winners",
"Heavy metal musical groups from California",
"Musical groups established in 1990",
"Musical groups from Los Angeles",
"Musical quartets",
"Progressive rock musical groups from California",
"Tool (band)",
"Volcano Entertainment artists",
"Zoo Entertainment (record label) artists"
] |
Tool is an American rock band from Los Angeles. Formed in 1990, the group's line-up includes vocalist Maynard James Keenan, guitarist Adam Jones and drummer Danny Carey. Justin Chancellor has been the band's bassist since 1995, replacing its original bassist Paul D'Amour. Tool has won four Grammy Awards, performed worldwide tours, and produced albums topping the charts in several countries.
To date, the band has released five studio albums, one EP and one box set. It emerged with a heavy metal sound on their first studio album, Undertow (1993), and became a dominant act in the alternative metal movement with the release of their follow-up album Ænima in 1996. The group's efforts to combine musical experimentation, visual arts, and a message of personal evolution continued with Lateralus (2001) and 10,000 Days (2006), gaining critical acclaim and international commercial success. Its fifth studio album Fear Inoculum was released on August 30, 2019, to widespread critical acclaim. Prior to its release, the band had sold more than 13 million albums in the US alone.
Due to Tool's incorporation of visual arts and very long and complex releases, the band is generally described as a style-transcending act and part of progressive rock, psychedelic rock, and art rock. The relationship between the band and today's music industry is ambivalent, at times marked by censorship, and the band's insistence on privacy.
## History
### Formation and Opiate (1989–1992)
During the 1980s, each of the future members of Tool moved to Los Angeles. Both Paul D'Amour and Adam Jones wanted to enter the film industry, while Maynard James Keenan, who had studied visual arts in Michigan, worked as a pet store remodeler. Danny Carey and Keenan performed for Green Jellÿ, and Carey played with Carole King and Pigmy Love Circus.
Keenan and Jones met through a mutual friend in 1989. After Keenan played for Jones a tape recording of his previous band project, Jones was so impressed by his voice that he eventually talked his friend into forming a new band. They started jamming together while searching for a drummer and a bass player. Carey happened to live above Keenan and was introduced to Jones by Tom Morello, an old high school friend of Jones and former member of Electric Sheep. Carey began playing in their sessions because he "felt kinda sorry for them", as other invited musicians were not showing up. Tool's lineup was completed when a friend of Jones introduced the members to bassist D'Amour. Early on, the band fabricated the story that it formed because of the pseudophilosophy "lachrymology". Although "lachrymology" was also cited as an inspiration for the band's name, Keenan later explained the members' intentions differently: "Tool is exactly what it sounds like: It's a big dick. It's a wrench. ... we are ... your tool; use us as a catalyst in your process of finding out whatever it is you need to find out, or whatever it is you're trying to achieve."
After almost two years of practicing and performing locally in the Los Angeles area, the band was approached by record companies, and eventually signed a record deal with Zoo Entertainment. In March 1992, Zoo released the band's first effort, Opiate. Described by the band as "slam and bang" heavy music and the "hardest sounding" six songs they had written to that point, the EP included the singles "Hush" and "Opiate". The band's first music video, "Hush", promoted their dissenting views about the then-prominent Parents Music Resource Center and its advocacy of the censorship of music. The video featured the band members naked with their genitalia covered by Parental Advisory stickers and their mouths covered by duct tape. The band began touring with Rollins Band, Fishbone, Rage Against the Machine, White Zombie, and Corrosion of Conformity, to positive responses, which Janiss Garza of RIP Magazine summarized in September 1992 as a "buzz" and "a strong start".
### Undertow (1993–1994)
The following year, at a time when alternative rock and grunge were at their height, Tool released their first full-length album, Undertow (1993). It expressed more diverse dynamics than Opiate and included songs the band had chosen not to publish on their previous release, when they had opted for a heavier sound. The band began touring again as planned, with an exception in May 1993. Tool was scheduled to play at the Garden Pavilion in Hollywood but learned at the last minute that the venue belonged to the Church of Scientology, which was perceived as a clash with "the band's ethics about how a person should not follow a belief system that constricts their development as a human being." Keenan "spent most of the show baa-ing like a sheep at the audience."
Tool later played several concerts during the Lollapalooza festival tour, and was moved from the second stage to the main stage by the group's manager and the festival co-founder Ted Gardner. At the last concert of Lollapalooza in Tool's hometown Los Angeles, comedian Bill Hicks introduced the band. Hicks had become a friend of the band members and an influence on them after being mentioned in Undertow'''s liner notes. He jokingly asked the audience of 10,000 people to stand still and help him look for a lost contact lens. The boost in popularity gained from these concerts helped Undertow to be certified gold by the RIAA in September 1993 and to achieve platinum status in 1995, despite being sold with censored album artwork by distributors such as Wal-Mart. The single "Sober" became a hit single by March 1994 and won the band Billboard's "Best Video by a New Artist" award for the accompanying stop motion music video.
With the release of Tool's follow-up single "Prison Sex", the band again became the target of censorship. The song's lyrics and video dealt with child abuse, which sparked controversial reactions; Keenan's lyrics begin with: "It took so long to remember just what happened. I was so young and vestal then, you know it hurt me, but I'm breathing so I guess I'm still alive ... I've got my hands bound and my head down and my eyes closed and my throat wide open." The video was created primarily by guitarist Adam Jones, who saw it as his "surrealistic interpretation" of the subject matter. While some contemporary journalists praised the video and described the lyrics as "metaphoric", the American branch of MuchMusic (which asked Keenan to represent the band in a hearing) deemed the music video too graphic and obscene, and MTV stopped airing it after a few showings.
### Ænima and Salival (1995–2000)
In September 1995, the band began writing and recording its second studio album. At that time Tool experienced its only lineup change to date, with bassist D'Amour leaving the band amicably to pursue other projects. According to Carey, D'Amour left the band because he wanted to play guitar rather than bass. Justin Chancellor, a member of former tourmate band Peach, eventually replaced D'Amour during the recording of the album, having been chosen over competitors such as Kyuss's Scott Reeder, Filter's Frank Cavanaugh, Pigmy Love Circus's E. Shepherd Stevenson, Jane's Addiction's Eric Avery, and ZAUM's Marco Fox.
On September 17, 1996, Tool released its second full-length album, Ænima ("ON-ima"). The band enlisted the help of producer David Bottrill, who had produced some of King Crimson's albums, while Jones collaborated with Cam de Leon to create Ænima's Grammy-nominated artwork. The album was dedicated to stand-up comedian Bill Hicks, who died two-and-a-half years earlier. The band intended to raise awareness about Hicks's material and ideas, because they felt that Tool and Hicks "were resonating similar concepts". In particular, Ænima's final track "Third Eye" is preceded by a clip of Hicks' performances, and the lenticular casing of the Ænima album packaging as well as the chorus of the title track "Ænema" make reference to a sketch from Hicks's Arizona Bay, in which he contemplates the idea of Los Angeles falling into the Pacific Ocean.
The first single, "Stinkfist", garnered limited airplay. It was shortened by radio programmers, MTV (U.S.) renamed the music video of "Stinkfist" to "Track No. 1" due to offensive connotations, and the lyrics of the song were altered. Responding to fan complaints about censorship, Matt Pinfield of MTV's 120 Minutes expressed regret on air by waving his fist in front of his face while introducing the video and explaining the name change.
A tour began in October 1996, two weeks after Ænima's release. Following numerous appearances in the United States and Europe, Tool headed for Australia and New Zealand in late March 1997. Eventually returning to the United States, Tool appeared at Lollapalooza '97 in July, this time as a headliner, where they gained critical praise from The New York Times. Ænima eventually matched Tool's successful debut album in sales, and the progressive-influenced album landed the band at the head of the alternative metal genre. It featured the Grammy Award-winning "Ænema" and appeared on several "Best Albums of 1996" lists, with notable examples being those of Kerrang! and Terrorizer. It was eventually certified triple platinum by the RIAA on March 4, 2003. In 1998, Tool joined the Ozzfest tour in the United States as the co-headliner act before Ozzy Osbourne. The band accepted on the condition that Melvins had to join it as well because, as stated by its frontman Buzz Osborne, they "wanted at least one band on the tour that they liked", despite the dissuasions from the tour organizers.
Two legal battles then began that interfered with the band's working on another release. Volcano Entertainment—the successor of Tool's by-then defunct label Zoo Entertainment—alleged contract violations by Tool and filed a lawsuit. According to Volcano, Tool had violated their contract when the band looked at offers from other record labels. After Tool filed a counter-suit stating that Volcano had failed to use a renewal option in their contract, the parties settled out of court. In December 1998 Tool agreed to a new contract, a three-record joint venture deal. Then in 2000, the band dismissed their long-time manager Ted Gardner, who then sued the band over his commission. During this time, Keenan joined the band A Perfect Circle, which was founded by long-time Tool guitar tech Billy Howerdel, while Jones joined The Melvins' Buzz Osborne and Carey drummed with Dead Kennedys' Jello Biafra on side projects. Although there were rumors that Tool was breaking up, Chancellor, Jones, and Carey were working on new material while waiting for Keenan to return. In 2000, the Salival box set (CD/VHS or CD/DVD) was released, effectively putting an end to the rumors. The CD contained one new original track, a cover of Led Zeppelin's "No Quarter", a live version of Peach's "You Lied", and revised versions of old songs. The VHS and the DVD each contained four music videos, plus a bonus music video for "Hush" on the DVD. Although Salival did not yield any singles, the hidden track "Maynard's Dick" (which dates back to the Opiate era) briefly found its way to FM radio when several DJs chose to play it on air under the title "Maynard's Dead".
### Lateralus (2001–2005)
In January 2001, Tool announced a new album, Systema Encéphale, along with a 12-song track list containing titles such as "Riverchrist", "Numbereft", "Encephatalis", "Musick", and "Coeliacus". File-sharing networks such as Napster were flooded with bogus files bearing the titles' names. A month later, the band revealed that the new album was actually titled Lateralus; the name Systema Encéphale and the track list had been a ruse. Lateralus and the corresponding tours would take Tool a step further toward art rock and progressive rock territory. Rolling Stone wrote in an attempt to summarize the album that "Drums, bass and guitars move in jarring cycles of hyperhowl and near-silent death march ... The prolonged running times of most of Lateralus' thirteen tracks are misleading; the entire album rolls and stomps with suitelike purpose." Joshua Klein of The A.V. Club expressed his opinion that Lateralus, with its 79 minutes and relatively complex and long songs—topped by the ten-and-a-half-minute music video for "Parabola"—posed a challenge to fans and music programming alike.
The album became a worldwide success, reaching No.1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart in its debut week. Tool received their second Grammy Award for the best metal performance of 2001 for the song "Schism". During the band's acceptance speech, Carey stated that he would like to thank his parents (for putting up with him) and Satan, and bassist Chancellor concluded: "I want to thank my dad for doing my mom."
Extensive touring throughout 2001 and 2002 supported Lateralus and included a personal highlight for the band: a 10-show joint mini-tour with King Crimson in August 2001. Comparisons between the two were made, MTV describing the bands as "the once and future kings of progressive rock". Keenan stated of the minitour: "For me, being on stage with King Crimson is like Lenny Kravitz playing with Led Zeppelin, or Britney Spears onstage with Debbie Gibson." Although the end of the tour in November 2002 seemed to signal the start of another hiatus for the band, they did not become completely inactive. While Keenan recorded and toured with A Perfect Circle, the other band members released an interview and a recording of new material, both exclusive to the fan club. The "double vinyl four-picture disc" edition of Lateralus was first released as a limited autographed edition exclusively available to fan club members and publicly released on August 23, 2005. On December 20 the two DVDs were released, one containing the single "Schism" and the other "Parabola", a remix by Lustmord, and a music video with commentary by David Yow and Jello Biafra.
### 10,000 Days (2006–2009)
Fifteen years into the band's career, Tool had acquired what Dan Epstein of Revolver described as a devoted "cult" following, and as details about the band's next album emerged, such as the influence of Lateralus tourmates Fantômas and Meshuggah, controversy surrounding the new Tool album surfaced with speculation over song titles and pre-release rumors of leaked songs. Speculation over possible album titles was dismissed with a news item on the official Tool website, announcing that the new album's name was 10,000 Days. Nevertheless, speculation continued, with allegations that 10,000 Days was merely a "decoy" album to fool audiences. The rumor was proven false when a leaked copy of the album was distributed via filesharing networks a week prior to its official release.
The album opener, "Vicarious", premiered on U.S. radio stations on April 17, 2006. The album premiered on May 2 in the U.S. and debuted at the top spots of various international charts. 10,000 Days sold 564,000 copies in its opening week in the U.S. and was number one on the Billboard 200 charts, doubling the sales of Pearl Jam's self-titled album, its closest competitor. However, 10,000 Days was received less favorably by critics than its predecessor Lateralus had been.
Prior to the release of 10,000 Days, a tour kicked off at Coachella on April 30. The touring schedule was similar to the Lateralus tour of 2001; supporting acts were Isis and Mastodon. During a short break early the next year, after touring Australia and New Zealand, drummer Carey suffered a biceps tear during a skirmish with his girlfriend's dog, casting uncertainty on the band's upcoming concerts in North America. Carey underwent surgery on February 21 and several performances had to be postponed. Back on tour by April, Tool appeared on June 15 as a headliner at the Bonnaroo Music Festival with a guest appearance from Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello on "Lateralus". Meanwhile, "Vicarious" was a nominee for Best Hard Rock Performance and 10,000 Days won Best Recording Package at the 49th Grammy Awards. The music video for "Vicarious" was released on DVD on December 18. The band's 2009 summer tour began on July 18 in Commerce City, Colorado, at the Mile High Music Festival. They headlined Lollapalooza 2009 and a show on August 22 for the Epicenter Festival in Pomona, California.
### Fear Inoculum (2012–present)
Their Tool Winter Tour played dates across the U.S. and Canada in January and February 2012. The band played at Ozzfest Japan on May 12, 2013. On July 15, 2014, Carey and Jones informed Rolling Stone that family commitments and an ongoing lawsuit are the key reasons for the delayed fifth album. Carey said to the music publication that one untitled track is "pretty much done". In March 2015, Jones revealed that the lawsuit had been settled in the band's favor, and as such, the band was turning their focus towards recording the album. He said that he hoped the album would be finished before the end of 2015 but emphasized that the band would not rush their work to meet an arbitrary deadline. In January 2016, Tool undertook a tour of the United States. While it was reported in February 2017 that Keenan had entered the studio to work on vocals for the fifth Tool album, it was later reported that the album was not scheduled for release in 2017. Still, the band announced a North American tour starting in May. A month later, Chancellor revealed that the new Tool album was "about 90-percent there", while Carey claimed in separate interviews that it would "definitely" be released in 2018. In February 2018, Jones revealed that Keenan was working on lyrics for the album, and that the band would begin recording in March. In June 2018, during his acceptance speech for the Icon Award at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards, Keenan stated "I'll go on record now saying you're gonna see some new music next year."
`On September 11, 2018, Keenan announced via Twitter that production on the record was progressing and that vocals had been written, before suggesting a 2019 release. In January 2019, Keenan announced that he had completed recording his vocals for the album "months ago." While Carey mentioned aiming for a mid-April release date, Keenan later explained that between May and July was a more realistic time frame to wrap up production and release the album. On May 5, 2019, the band debuted two new songs live at the Welcome to Rockville Festival in Jacksonville, Florida called "Descending" and "Invincible". Three days later, it was confirmed that the band's new album is scheduled to be released on August 30, 2019. On July 29, 2019, Keenan confirmed the album would be titled Fear Inoculum. The album's title track was released as a single on August 7, the band's first release in 13 years.`
On August 2, the entirety of Tool's discography (with the exception of Salival) became available on digital streaming platforms. Tool was one of the last major holdouts to release their music digitally, as their record deal was signed before the rise in streaming and not revisited until before Fear Inoculum. The release of the discography online resulted in every release re-charting on several international charts and the band breaking several Billboard chart records. Fear Inoculum was officially launched on August 30 and became their third U.S. number one.
On January 26, 2020 the band won the Best Metal Performance for their song "7empest" at the 62nd Grammy Awards Their other nomination, the song "Fear Inoculum" lost the Best Rock Song category to Gary Clark Jr.
In June 2020, the band announced that it will cancel its upcoming 2020 North American tour entirely, after initially postponing a handful of dates due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The following August, Carey noted that the band had entered a hiatus, but that he still hoped they would reconvene in the future to record an EP, which the band would have more freedom in releasing due to no longer being signed to a record label. On October 27, 2020, an instrumental song titled "The Witness" was released featuring Jones, Chancellor, and Carey, and featuring production from Barresi, though the song was credited to Jones, not the band itself.
"Opiate" was re-recorded and released as "Opiate2" or "Opiate Squared" on March 1, 2022. It is almost twice as long as the original and includes the same lyrics as the live version, plus the extended instrumental midsection. A music video directed by Dominic Hailstone was released on March 18, 2022, to commemorate the EP's 30th anniversary. Carey mentioned in the same month that the band has been working on new material for their sixth studio album: "I'm sure it won't take us this long for the next one. We even had some stuff left over from the last one that we'll develop. We have head starts on three or four new songs."
## Musical style and influences
### Musical style
Tool's musical style has been described as alternative metal, art rock, post-metal, progressive rock, progressive metal, and heavy metal. Tool was described by Patrick Donovan of The Age as "the thinking person's metal band. Cerebral and visceral, soft and heavy, melodic and abrasive, tender and brutal, familiar and strange, western and eastern, beautiful and ugly, taut yet sprawling and epic, they are a tangle of contradictions." Tool has gained critical praise from the International Herald Tribune's C.B. Liddell for their complex and ever-evolving sound. Describing their general sound, AllMusic refers to them as "grinding, post-Jane's Addiction heavy metal", and The New York Times sees similarities to "Led Zeppelin's heaving, battering guitar riffs and Middle Eastern modes". Their 2001 work Lateralus was compared by Allmusic to Pink Floyd's Meddle (1971), but thirty years later and altered by "Tool's impulse to cram every inch of infinity with hard guitar meat and absolute dread". Tool had been labelled as post-metal in 1993 and 1996, as well as in 2006, after the term came into popularity. A component of Tool's song repertoire relies on the use of unusual time signatures. For instance, Chancellor describes the time signature employed on the first single from Lateralus, "Schism", as "six" and "six-and-a-half" and that it later "goes into all kinds of other times". Further examples include the album's title track, which also displays shifting rhythms, as do 10,000 Days: "Wings for Marie (Pt 1)" and "10,000 Days (Wings Pt 2)".
Beyond this aspect of the band's sound, each band member experiments within his wide musical scope. Bass Player magazine described Chancellor's bass playing as having a "thick midrange tone, guitar-style techniques, and elastic versatility". As an example of this, the magazine mentioned the use of a wah effect by hammering "the notes with the left hand and using the bass's tone controls to get a tone sweep", such as on the song "The Patient", from Lateralus.
Completing the band's rhythm section, drummer Carey uses polyrhythms, tabla-style techniques, and the incorporation of custom electronic drum pads to trigger samples, such as prerecorded tabla and octoban sounds.
Keenan's ability as a vocalist has been characterized more subjectively by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: After his performance during an Alice in Chains reunion concert in 2005, freelancer Travis Hay saw him as "a natural fit at replacing Layne Staley". Regarding his role in A Perfect Circle and Tool, The New York Times wrote that "both groups rely on Mr. Keenan's ability to dignify emotions like lust, anger and disgust, the honey in his voice adding a touch of profundity".
According to Guitar Player magazine, Jones does not rely on any one particular guitar-playing technique but rather combines many techniques. For example, Allmusic wrote that he "alternately utiliz[es] power chords, scratchy noise, chiming arpeggios, and a quiet minimalism" in "Sober". Additionally, the band uses forms of instrumental experimentation, like the use of a "pipe bomb microphone" (a guitar pickup mounted inside a brass cylinder) and a talk box guitar solo on "Jambi".
The band puts an emphasis on the sound of their songs and attempts to reduce the effect lyrics can have on the perception of songs by not releasing song lyrics with their albums, although they eventually released the lyrics for Fear Inoculum for that album's CD. Lyrical arrangements are often given special attention, such as in "Lateralus". The number of syllables per line in the lyrics to "Lateralus" correspond to an arrangement of the Fibonacci numbers and the song "Jambi" uses and makes a reference to the common metrical foot iamb. The lyrics on Ænima and Lateralus focus on philosophy and spirituality—specific subjects range from organized religion in "Opiate", to evolution and Jungian psychology in "Forty-Six & 2" and transcendence in "Lateralus". On 10,000 Days, Keenan wanted to explore issues more personal to him: the album name and title track refer to the twenty-seven years during which his mother suffered from complications of a stroke until her death in 2003.
### Influences
In 1997, Tool named King Crimson, Melvins, and Peter Gabriel's Passion as common influences on its development. In describing their wide range of styles, critics have noted that they are "influenced as much by Pink Floyd as by the Sex Pistols." In a 1993 interview, Adam Jones mentioned Joni Mitchell, King Crimson, Depeche Mode, and country music as being among their inspirations. In 1997, Maynard James Keenan named Hejira by Joni Mitchell, Holy Money/Greed by Swans, Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin, Red by King Crimson, and Passion by Peter Gabriel as his five favorite records. Danny Carey cited Bill Bruford and Alan White of Yes as his two biggest rock influences, in addition to Bruford's adventurousness in electronic drums. In the same way, Jones stated that Robert Fripp's performances with King Crimson caused him to "wake up" to music as a teen. Furthermore, he acknowledged the other King Crimson guitarists, Adrian Belew and Trey Gunn, along with Buzz Osborne from the Melvins, as his biggest influences.
Tool have constantly expressed the massive impact that progressive rock pioneers King Crimson have had on their music; on a 2001 tour with them, Keenan joked: "Now you know who we ripped off. Just don't tell anyone, especially the members of King Crimson." Carey said that listening to the Discipline album upon its 1981 release "revolutionized" his musical perspective in terms of polyrhythms and the balance between the instruments. In 1997, Keenan explained how the composition process of Tool reflected that of King Crimson: "They're very much into listening to each other; even though they might have a basic structure that they're following, it's about fitting themselves in with each other." Contrary to these statements, longtime King Crimson member Robert Fripp has downplayed any influence his band had on Tool. In an interview, Fripp touched on how the two bands relate to each other, stating "Do you hear the influence? There's just one figure where I hear an influence, just one. It was a piece we were developing that we dropped. And it's almost exactly the same figure: three note arpeggio with a particular accent from the guitar. So I do not think you could have heard it. That's the only thing." He also said,
> I happen to be a Tool fan. The members of Tool have been generous enough to suggest that Crimson has been an influence on them. Adam Jones asked me if I could detect it in their music, and I said I couldn't. I can detect more Tool influence in King Crimson than I can hear King Crimson in Tool.
The band's long build-ups of intensity were largely inspired by the Melvins. The latter's influence on Tool is most explicit in Undertow, and some authors have described Tool's music as a progressive take on Melvins. On the other hand, Keenan's exotic modulations were influenced by world music; in his twenties, the singer was immersed in that type of music, thus when Peter Gabriel reunited several musicians whom Keenan already knew of for The Last Temptation of Christ soundtrack, which mixed their traditional styles with modern ambient music, it became a major revelation for him.
Other reported influences of Tool include Fantômas, Devo, Bill Hicks, Rush, Helmet, Faith No More, Bauhaus, Meshuggah, David Bowie, Mike Patton, Dave Lombardo, and Jane's Addiction.
### Influence on other artists
Writers HP Newquist and Rich Maloof attribute to Tool an influence on modern metal in their book The New Metal Masters. Sean Richardson of The Boston Phoenix sees System of a Down, Deftones, and Korn as examples of Tool's "towering influence" on the genre. Keenan's unique style of singing has been seen as heavily influencing artists such as Pete Loeffler of Chevelle, Benjamin Burnley of Breaking Benjamin, Will Martin of Earshot, and Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit.
## Visual arts
Part of Tool's work as a band is to incorporate influences of other works of art in their music videos, live shows, and album packaging. Adam Jones doubles as the band's art director and director of their music videos. Another expression of this is an official website "dedicated to the arts and influences" on the band.
### Music videos
The band has released eight music videos but made personal appearances in only the first two, which the band states is to prevent people from "latching onto the personalities involved rather than listening to the music." With the exception of "Hush" and "Vicarious" all of Tool's music videos feature stop motion animation to some extent. The videos are created primarily by Adam Jones, often in collaboration with artists such as Chet Zar, Alex Grey, and Osseus Labyrint.
The "Sober" music video in particular attracted much attention. Jones explained that it does not contain a storyline, but that his intentions were to summon personal emotions with its imagery. Rolling Stone described this imagery as "evil little men dwell in a dark dungeon with meat coursing through pipes in the wall" and called it a "groundbreaking", "epic" clip. Billboard voted it "Best Video by a New Artist".
The video for "Vicarious" was released on DVD on December 18, 2007. The video is the first by Tool to be produced entirely through the use of CGI.
### Album artwork
Jones is responsible for most of the band's artwork concepts. The album Undertow features a ribcage sculpture by Jones on its cover and photos contributed by the band members. Later albums included artwork by collaborating artists: Ænima and Salival featured works by Cam de Leon; Lateralus and 10,000 Days were created with the help of Alex Grey. The releases garnered positive critical reception, with a music journalist of the Associated Press attributing to the band a reputation for innovative album packaging.
Both Ænima and 10,000 Days were nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Recording Package, but while the former failed to win in 1997, the latter did win in 2007. Jones created packaging for 10,000 Days that features a pair of stereoscopic lenses for viewing 3-D artwork and photos. Jones, a lifelong fan of stereoscopic photography, wanted the packaging to be unique and to reflect the 1970s artwork he appreciates. The CD packaging for Fear Inoculum included a rechargeable 4 inch HD video screen and a speaker which played a hidden track along with a video when opened and also included a 36-page booklet.
### Live shows
Following its first tours in the early 1990s, Tool has performed as a headline act in world tours and major festivals such as Lollapalooza (1997 and 2009), Coachella (1999 and 2006), Voodoo Fest (2001 and 2016), Download Festival (2006 and 2019), Roskilde (2001 and 2006), Big Day Out (2007 and 2011), Bonnaroo (2007 and 2022), All Points West Music & Arts Festival (2009), and Epicenter (2009). They have been joined on stage by numerous artists such as Buzz Osborne and Scott Reeder on several occasions; Tom Morello and Zack de la Rocha during their 1991 tour; Layne Staley in Hawaii, 1993; Tricky, Robert Fripp, Mike Patton, Dave Lombardo, Brann Dailor of Mastodon, and experimental arts duo Osseus Labyrint during their 2001–02 Lateralus tour; and Kirk Hammett, Phil Campbell, Serj Tankian, and Tom Morello during their 2006–07 tour. They have covered songs by Led Zeppelin, Ted Nugent, Peach, Kyuss, the Dead Kennedys, and the Ramones.
Live shows on Tool's headline tour incorporate an unorthodox stage setting and video display. Keenan and Carey line up in the back on elevated platforms, while Jones and Chancellor stand in the front, toward the sides of the stage. Keenan often faces the backdrop or the sides of the stage rather than the audience. No followspots or live cameras are used; instead, the band employs extensive backlighting to direct the focus away from the band members and toward large screens in the back and the crowd. Breckinridge Haggerty, the band's live video designer, says that the resulting dark spaces on stage "are mostly for Maynard". He explains, "[a] lot of the songs are a personal journey for him and he has a hard time with the glare of the lights when he's trying to reproduce these emotions for the audience. He needs a bit of personal space, and he feels more comfortable in the shadows." The big screens are used to play back "looped clips that aren't tracked to a song like a music video. The band has never used any sort of timecode. They’ve always made sure the video can change on-the-fly, in a way that can be improvised. ... The show is never the same twice." During the 10,000 Days tour, the video material consisted of over six hours of material, created by Jones, his wife Camella Grace, Chet Zar, Meats Meier, and Haggerty. Some of the material created by Zar has been released on his DVD Disturb the Normal.
## Band members
- Maynard James Keenan – vocals (1990–present)
- Adam Jones – guitars (1990–present)
- Danny Carey – drums, percussion (1990–present), samples (1995–present)
- Justin Chancellor – bass (1995–present)
Former members
- Paul D'Amour – bass (1990–1995)
## Awards and nominations
## Discography
- Undertow (1993)
- Ænima (1996)
- Lateralus (2001)
- 10,000 Days (2006)
- Fear Inoculum (2019)
|
58,396,263 |
Hurricane Olivia (2018)
| 1,171,667,038 |
Category 4 hurricane in the Pacific Ocean
|
[
"2018 Pacific hurricane season",
"2018 in Hawaii",
"Category 4 Pacific hurricanes",
"Hurricanes in Hawaii",
"September 2018 events in Oceania",
"September 2018 events in the United States",
"Tropical cyclones in 2018"
] |
Hurricane Olivia was a Category 4 hurricane that impacted Hawaii as a weakening tropical storm in mid-September 2018, causing severe flooding and wind damage. Olivia was the first tropical cyclone to make landfall on Maui and Lanai in recorded history. It was the fifteenth named storm, ninth hurricane, and sixth major hurricane of the 2018 Pacific hurricane season.
A tropical depression formed southwest of Mexico on September 1, and slowly organized while hindered by northeasterly wind shear, strengthening into Tropical Storm Olivia a day later. Olivia began a period of rapid intensification on September 3, reaching its initial peak as a high-end Category 3 hurricane on September 5. Soon after, the cyclone began to weaken, before unexpectedly re-intensifying on September 6. Olivia peaked as a Category 4 hurricane on September 7, with winds of 130 mph (215 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 951 mbar (28.08 inHg). Six hours later, Olivia began another weakening trend that resulted in the hurricane being downgraded to Category 1 status on September 8, east of the 140th meridian west. Olivia entered the Central Pacific Basin on September 9 while continuing to decay. For much of its existence, Olivia had tracked westward to northwestward under the influence of a subtropical ridge. The cyclone weakened to a tropical storm on September 12, while turning towards the west-southwest as a result of trade winds. Olivia made brief landfalls on Maui and Lanai, with winds of 45 mph (75 km/h), later in the day. Olivia fluctuated in intensity as it tracked away from the Hawaiian Islands, before transitioning to a post-tropical cyclone on September 14. It opened up into a trough of low-pressure several hours later.
Olivia's approach towards the Hawaiian Islands prompted the issuance of tropical storm watches and warnings for Hawaii County, Maui County, the island of Oahu, and Kauai County. Hawaii Governor David Ige declared Hawaii, Maui, Kalawao, Kauai, and Honolulu counties disaster areas prior to Olivia's landfall in order to activate emergency disaster funds and management. Tropical-storm-force winds mainly affected Maui County and Oahu. Torrential rainfall occurred on both Maui and Oahu, peaking at 12.93 in (328 mm) in West Wailuaiki, Maui. Olivia felled trees, and caused thousands of power outages and severe flooding on Maui. Floodwaters deposited debris on roads and caused severe damage to portions of highways, most notably Lower Honoapiilani Road where cliffs were eroded along its shoulder; repairs to that road are still ongoing as of January 2021. In Honokohau Valley, the Honokohau stream rose over 15 ft (4.6 m), submerging a bridge and inundating over a dozen homes. Multiple homes and vehicles were swept away by floodwaters. Olivia left the valley without potable water for more than a week. Ditch systems in the valley that supply water to residents were damaged during the storm; repairs cost \$300,000–\$400,000 (2018 USD) and finished during May 2020. Several hundred power outages occurred on Molokai, and around 1,100 lost power in Honolulu. A pipe overflowed from excessive rainfall on Oahu, sending raw sewage into Kapalama Stream and Honolulu Harbor. United States President Donald Trump issued a disaster declaration for Hawaii to aid with emergency response efforts. Olivia caused a total of \$25 million in damage throughout Hawaii.
## Meteorological history
Hurricane Olivia originated from a disturbance that developed over the southwest Caribbean Sea on August 26. The disturbance tracked westward, crossing over Central America and entering the Eastern Pacific Ocean a couple of days later. Associated thunderstorm activity increased over the next few days, and by early August 31, a broad low-pressure area had developed several hundred miles south of Mexico's southwestern coast. Atmospheric convection organized around the system's center, prompting the National Hurricane Center (NHC) to declare a tropical depression had formed by 00:00 UTC on September 1, approximately 405 mi (652 km) southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. While the depression was located over warm sea surface temperatures, northeasterly wind shear prevented any intensification from occurring on September 1. Although the system was still elongated and disorganized, convection had been increasing over and west of its center. This led to the depression strengthening into Tropical Storm Olivia by 00:00 UTC on September 2, while it was located 520 mi (840 km) south of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
Soon after, Olivia began a northwestward motion as a result of a weakness in the subtropical ridge located to the north. Wind shear displaced the cyclone's low-level center to the north and northeast of the convective canopy through September 3. The wind shear abated early on September 3, allowing Olivia to begin a period of rapid intensification. Meanwhile, the storm turned towards the west as the ridge strengthened. Later in the day, the amount of banding features – significantly elongated, curved bands of rain clouds – increased greatly while Olivia's inner core strengthened; microwave imagery displayed an irregular eye underneath the system's central dense overcast. Olivia became a Category 1 hurricane around 00:00 UTC on September 4, while located 575 mi (925 km) southwest of Cabo San Lucas. The cyclone continued to intensify, reaching its initial peak intensity as a Category 3 major hurricane at 00:00 UTC on September 5, with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph (205 km/h). Around that time, Olivia exhibited a prominent 15–25 mi (24–40 km) wide eye within its central dense overcast. The hurricane began to weaken shortly after its initial peak as sea surface temperatures decreased, wind shear increased, and dry air incorporated into the storm. Olivia's eyewall collapsed in the north and convection eroded in the northwestern quadrant. Olivia bottomed out as a minimal Category 2 hurricane around 18:00 UTC on September 5. Models had predicted that Olivia would weaken as a result of dry air and lower sea surface temperatures, however, a second, unexpected round of intensification occurred. At the time, the hurricane's eye was uneven and the convective canopy was lopsided. Olivia strengthened over the next day, regaining major hurricane status by 12:00 UTC on September 6. The cyclone peaked around 00:00 UTC on September 7, as a Category 4 hurricane with 1-minute maximum sustained winds of 130 mph (215 km/h) and a minimum central pressure of 951 mbar (28.08 inHg), while located over 1,265 mi (2,036 km) west of Cabo San Lucas. Olivia had become an annular hurricane, developing a cloud-free eye embedded within a symmetric, ring-shaped central dense overcast.
Cooler sea surface temperatures of 77–79 °F (25–26 °C) and low-to-mid-level dry air caused Olivia to weaken shortly after its peak. Continuing to track west-northwestward under the subtropical ridge, Olivia gradually weakened as it approached the Central Pacific Ocean, with cloud tops warming and its eye temperature decreasing. Olivia began tracking westward under the influence of a strengthening subtropical ridge mid-day on September 8. After having fallen to Category 1 status, the cyclone crossed the 140th meridian west and entered the Central Pacific Basin around 00:00 UTC on September 9. Olivia continued to decay, with its eye disappearing, and the cyclone weakening to a minimal Category 1 storm by 12:00 UTC. Later that day, low wind shear and slightly higher sea surface temperatures allowed Olivia to restrengthen slightly and re-develop an eye feature on satellite imagery. The hurricane strengthened to 85 mph (140 km/h) by 00:00 UTC on September 10 and maintained that intensity for 12 hours before increasing wind shear caused the storm to weaken once more. Olivia's eye became cloud-filled and the system fell below hurricane intensity by 06:00 UTC on September 11. Increasing wind shear caused faster weakening, displacing convection well to the east of the low-level center. Olivia weakened into a 45 mph (75 km/h) tropical storm by 06:00 UTC on September 12. Flow from low-level trade winds had turned Olivia to the west-southwest and caused it to slow down by 00:00 UTC on that day. An upper-level trough shifted the storm back to a westward direction and further reduced its forward speed later that day. Olivia made brief landfalls over Maui and Lanai, the first such instance in recorded history, on September 12, at 19:10 UTC and 19:54 UTC, respectively, with sustained winds of 45 mph (75 km/h). High wind shear and interaction with the mountainous terrain of the Hawaiian Islands led to the rapid depletion and displacement of convection away from Olivia's center. Tracking west-southwestward, away from the Hawaiian Islands, Olivia weakened to tropical depression status by 06:00 UTC on September 13. Convection briefly redeveloped near the center of the depression, allowing Olivia to become a tropical storm again around 18:00 UTC. The storm turned westward and transitioned into a post-tropical cyclone by 06:00 UTC on September 14. This system opened up into a trough of low-pressure about 12 hours later.
## Preparations
Hurricane Olivia's approach towards the Hawaiian Islands warranted the issuance of tropical cyclone watches and warnings. A tropical storm watch was issued for the islands of Hawaii, Maui, Molokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe, and Oahu on September 10 at 03:00 UTC. By 15:00 UTC, every watch had been upgraded to a tropical storm warning except for the island of Oahu, which was upgraded at 03:00 UTC on the next day. Additional tropical storm watches had been issued for the islands of Kauai and Niihau at the same time on September 11. These watches were upgraded to tropical storm warnings by 21:00 UTC. The United States Coast Guard initiated Condition Whiskey at 08:00 HST on September 8 for ports in Hawaii, Maui, and Honolulu counties, expecting gale-force winds to occur within 72 hours. Honolulu and Kauai county ports were later upgraded to Condition X-ray, with the expectation of gale-force winds occurring within 48 hours. By 08:00 HST on September 9, ports in Hawaii and Maui counties were upgraded to Condition Yankee, with the expectation of gale-force winds within 24 hours. At both of these conditions, restrictions were set on ports. Pleasure craft were asked to travel into safer waters, and any barge or other ocean-traveling ship above 200 short tons (180 t) were asked to remain in port if they had permission to do so or depart from the port if they did not. Ports in Hawaii, Maui, and Honolulu counties were upgraded to Condition Zulu at 08:00 HST on September 11, when gale-force winds were expected to occur in less than 12 hours. All ports in those counties were closed to naval traffic until the danger from Olivia had ended.
Maui County closed all government offices, schools, and the court system in anticipation of Olivia's impact. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) readied personnel and supplies on Maui, and the Hawaii National Guard stationed troops and transportation trucks on the eastern side of the island. Hawaiian Airlines canceled flights for its Ohana commuter airline service. Fees for changing flights were waived by multiple airline companies during the storm. Hawaii Governor David Ige requested federal help for search and rescue, medical evacuations, medical care and shelter commodities, and generators. The governor declared Hawaii, Maui, Kalawao, Kauai, and Honolulu counties disaster areas prior to Olivia's landfall in order to activate emergency disaster funds and management.
## Impact and aftermath
Olivia brought heavy rainfall, winds, and high surf to the main Hawaiian Islands, less than a month after Hurricane Lane dropped a record 58 in (1,500 mm) of rain on the state. From September 11–12, 8–20 ft (2.4–6.1 m) high surf was reported along the northern and eastern facing shores of the Big Island, Maui, Molokai, and Lanai. Surf of this magnitude occurred along the southern and eastern shores of Oahu, and Kauai. In Maui County, the Lanai Airport recorded peak wind gusts of 55 mph (89 km/h). The highest rainfall occurred near West Wailuaiki on the island of Maui, peaking at 12.93 in (328 mm). Around 10.31 in (262 mm) of rain was recorded at the Manoa Lyon Arboretum on Oahu. A flash flood warning was issued for Molokai and Maui.
Olivia felled trees, caused severe flooding, and caused 6,800 power outages on Maui. Rising rivers prompted the evacuation of several residences in Lahaina and another in the Waihee Valley. In the former, floodwaters deposited mud in one home and fractured a concrete barrier wall along the property's riverfront boundary. Around 65 reports of damage occurred on Maui, with some reaching complete and total destruction. A brown water advisory, a recommendation for people to stay out of affected waters, was issued on September 18 for coastal waters near Waiheʻe to Kahului and Honokōhau to Honua Kai due to the possibility of contamination from various sources, including chemicals, sewage, pesticides, and animal carcasses. This replaced an advisory that covered the entire island of Maui; that advisory was issued after Olivia moved through the region. Multiple parks and forest reserves were closed to visitors due to a combination of water damage, land erosion, and downed trees. Several sections of the Hana Highway were closed after trees fell. The Honolua Ditch was clogged with debris; authorities asked customers to conserve water for the remainder of September while the ditch was cleaned out and repaired. Floodwaters damaged multiple portions of Lower Honoapiilani Road and eroded cliffs along its shoulder; temporary repairs cost about \$50,000 and complete repairs were estimated to exceed \$100,000 in cost. Temporary cliff restoration work was ongoing as of January 2021, consisting of sandbag and sheet wall repairs. Hololani Resort Condominiums and Goodfellow Bros, the company performing the work, was fined \$75,000 in that month for violating state health and county environmental regulations.
In the Honokohau Valley, multiple buildings, cars, and trees were swept away by floodwaters. At least a dozen homes were flooded after debris clogged streams, forcing the strong currents to forge new paths. The Honokohau stream rose 15 ft (4.6 m), submerging the Honokohau bridge; debris floating downstream struck the foundations of the bridge. A bridge that provided access to a home was destroyed, resulting in \$5,000 in damage. The house suffered flood damage; the telephone and water lines were destroyed. An elderly woman was rescued by her neighbors during the storm. The floor of a house was destroyed after it was submerged under 1 ft (0.30 m) of water. Another house had its floors plastered with mud after floodwaters entered the structure. On one property, a home was swept away, and another was moved off its foundation by floodwaters; the latter and a third building both required demolition due to flood damage. Another home was swept away by floodwaters and a second house was moved around 100 yd (91 m). Around a month after the storm, both homes were intentionally set on fire before repairs could commence; the fires caused a total of \$80,000 in damage. The valley was without potable water at least a week after the storm. Maui County workers parked a water tanker on the Honoapiilani Highway while work was underway on water services. Volunteers worked to clear the wreckage left by the storm so buildings could be repaired. The American Red Cross helped with recovery efforts. Maui restaurants donated 100 meals to people affected by the storm and those volunteering to help clear the wreckage left behind. The cost to replace a broken water inflow pipe in the valley was estimated at \$100,000. A road in Kahana that had been damaged during the storm was repaired for \$100,000.
Torrential rainfall and flooding from Hurricanes Lane and Olivia reduced water flow and damaged a control gate in the Honokohau Stream ditch system. The ditch provided water to farmers as well as residential areas. The Ka Malu o Kahalawai and West Maui Preservation Association filed a complaint with the state water commission in spring 2019, alleging that the Maui Land & Pineapple Company was wasting water, causing water dearths, and not maintaining critical infrastructure. The state commission approved a motion on November 20, 2019, that The Maui Land & Pineapple Company must upgrade the damaged structures. The Maui Land & Pineapple Company announced on December 4, 2019, that it began repairs on the Honokohau Stream ditch system. The project cost around \$300,000–\$400,000, with repairs finishing on May 11, 2020.
Floodwaters made eastern Molokai's only highway impassable. At least 700 power outages occurred on the island, resulting in the closure of a school. Power was restored by September 12; crews fixed multiple areas of downed lines and damaged poles.
The storm caused around 1,140 power outages in Honolulu. A roof was blown off a structure in ʻĀina Haina. Numerous roads, including portions of the Kamehameha Highway and Kalanianaole Highway, were closed due to flooding. Rainfall from Olivia caused the waterlevel behind the earthen Nuʻuanu Dam \#1 to rise 4–5 ft (1.2–1.5 m) overnight, prompting firefighters and officials to pump and siphon water away; however, the dam was not at risk of failure. A pipe overflowed from excessive rainfall, sending over 32,000 US gal (120,000 L) of raw sewage into the Kapalama Stream and Honolulu Harbor; the city disinfected the waters. At least 775 US gal (2,930 L) of sewage was contained by a vacuum truck. A 100 ft (30 m) landslide occurred at the top of the Manoa Falls Trail around a week after the storm, taking down trees and boulders.
According to Aon, Olivia caused a total of US\$25 million in damage throughout Hawaii. United States President Donald Trump declared Hawaii a disaster area to improve the response of FEMA. Bank of Hawaii allocated \$25,000 to relief programs for the extension or forbearance of loans, necessary items, and home and vehicle repairs. Hotel occupancy dropped an average of 2.1% in September for Maui compared to the same time in 2017 as a result of hurricanes Lane and Olivia. Overall, tourism increased in the month of October despite the two storms.
## See also
- Weather of 2018
- Tropical cyclones in 2018
- List of Category 4 Pacific hurricanes
- Other tropical cyclones named Olivia
- List of Hawaii hurricanes
- Tropical Storm Irah (1963)
- Hurricane Raymond (1983) – Category 4 hurricane that made landfall on Molokai as a tropical depression
- Tropical Storm Flossie (2013) – took a similar path and passed just north of Hawaii
- Hurricane Iselle (2014) – similarly intense system that affected the Big Island as a tropical storm
- Hurricane Darby (2016) – Category 3 hurricane that made landfall on the Big Island as a tropical storm
|
23,310,731 |
Marjorie Cameron
| 1,167,191,046 |
American actress and occultist (1922–1995)
|
[
"1922 births",
"1995 deaths",
"20th-century American actresses",
"20th-century American poets",
"American Thelemites",
"American contemporary artists",
"American occultists",
"Art in Greater Los Angeles",
"Feminist artists",
"Feminist spirituality",
"Military personnel from Iowa",
"New Age spiritual leaders",
"People from Belle Plaine, Iowa",
"People from Joshua Tree, California",
"United States Navy sailors",
"WAVES personnel"
] |
Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel (April 23, 1922 – July 24, 1995), who professionally used the mononym Cameron, was an American artist, poet, actress and occultist. A follower of Thelema, the new religious movement established by the English occultist Aleister Crowley, she was married to rocket pioneer and fellow Thelemite Jack Parsons.
Born in Belle Plaine, Iowa, Cameron volunteered for service in the United States Navy during the Second World War, after which she settled in Pasadena, California. There she met Parsons, who believed her to be the "elemental" woman that he had invoked in the early stages of a series of sex magic rituals called the Babalon Working. They entered into a relationship and were married in 1946. Their relationship was often strained, although Parsons sparked her involvement in Thelema and occultism. After Parsons' death in an explosion at their home in 1952, Cameron came to suspect that her husband had been assassinated and began rituals to communicate with his spirit. Moving to Beaumont, she established a multi-racial occult group called The Children, which dedicated itself to sex magic rituals with the intent of producing mixed-race "moon children" who would be devoted to the god Horus. The group soon dissolved, largely because many of its members became concerned by Cameron's increasingly apocalyptic predictions.
Returning to Los Angeles, Cameron befriended the socialite Samson De Brier and established herself within the city's avant-garde artistic community. Among her friends were the filmmakers Curtis Harrington and Kenneth Anger. She appeared in two of Harrington's films, The Wormwood Star and Night Tide, as well as in Anger's film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. In later years, she made appearances in art-house films created by John Chamberlain and Chick Strand. Rarely remaining in one place for long, during the 1950s and 1960s she lived in Joshua Tree, San Francisco and Santa Fe. In 1955, she gave birth to a daughter, Crystal Eve Kimmel. Although intermittent health problems prevented her from working, her art and poetry resulted in several exhibitions. From the late 1970s until her death from cancer in 1995, Cameron lived in a bungalow in West Hollywood, where she raised her daughter and grandchildren, pursued her interests in esotericism, and produced artwork and poetry.
Cameron's recognition as an artist increased after her death, when her paintings made appearances in exhibitions across the U.S. As a result of increased attention on Parsons, Cameron's life also gained greater coverage in the early 2000s. In 2006, the Cameron–Parsons Foundation was created to preserve and promote her work, and in 2011 a biography of Cameron written by Spencer Kansa was published.
## Biography
### Early life: 1922–1945
Cameron was born in Belle Plaine, Iowa, on April 23, 1922. Her father, railway worker Hill Leslie Cameron, was the adopted child of a Scots-Irish family; her mother, Carrie Cameron (née Ridenour), was of Dutch ancestry. She was their first child, and was followed by three siblings: James (b. 1923), Mary (b. 1927), and Robert (b. 1929). They lived on the wealthier north side of town, although life was nevertheless hard due to the Great Depression. Cameron attended Whittier Elementary School and Belle Plaine High School, where she did well at art, English, and drama but failed algebra, Latin, and civics lessons. She also participated in athletics, glee club, and chorus. Relating that one of her childhood friends had committed suicide and that she too had contemplated it, she characterized herself as a rebellious child, claiming that "I became the town pariah ... Nobody would let their kid near me". She had sexual relationships with various men; after Cameron became pregnant, her mother performed an illegal home abortion. In 1940, the Cameron family relocated to Davenport so Hill could work at the Rock Island Arsenal munitions factory. Cameron completed her final year of high school education at Davenport High School. Leaving school, she worked as a display artist in a local department store.
Following the United States' entry into the Second World War, Cameron signed up for the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, a part of the United States Navy, in February 1943. Initially sent to a training camp at Iowa State Teachers College in Cedar Falls, she was subsequently posted to Washington, D.C., where she served as a cartographer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the course of these duties, she met U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill in May 1943. She was reassigned to the Naval Photographic Unit in Anacostia, where she worked as a wardrobe mistress for propaganda documentaries, and during this period met various Hollywood stars. When her brother James returned to the U.S. injured from service overseas, she went AWOL and returned to Iowa to see him, as a result of which she was court–martialed and confined to barracks for the rest of the war. For reasons unknown to her, she received an honorable discharge from the military in 1945. To join her family, she traveled to Pasadena, California, where her father and brothers had found work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
### Jack Parsons: 1946–1952
In Pasadena, Cameron ran into a former colleague, who invited her to visit the large American Craftsman-style house where he was currently lodging, 1003 Orange Grove Avenue, also known as "The Parsonage". The house was so-called because its lease was owned by Jack Parsons, a rocket scientist who had been a founding member of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and who was also a devout follower of Thelema, a new religious movement founded by English occultist Aleister Crowley in 1904. Parsons was the head of the Agape Lodge, a branch of the Thelemite Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). Unbeknownst to Cameron, Parsons had just finished a series of rituals using Enochian magic with his friend and lodger L. Ron Hubbard, all with the intent of attracting an "elemental" woman to be his lover. Upon encountering Cameron with her distinctive red hair and blue eyes, Parsons considered her to be the individual whom he had invoked. After they met at The Parsonage on January 18, 1946, they were instantly attracted to each other and spent the next two weeks in Parsons' bedroom together. Although Cameron was unaware of it, Parsons saw this as a form of sex magic that constituted part of the Babalon Working, a rite to invoke the birth of Thelemite goddess Babalon onto Earth in human form.
During a brief visit to New York City to see a friend, Cameron discovered that she was pregnant and decided to have an abortion. Parsons meanwhile had founded a company with Hubbard and Hubbard's girlfriend Sara Northrup, Allied Enterprises, into which he invested his life savings. It became apparent that Hubbard was a confidence trickster, who tried to flee with Parsons' money, resulting in the end of their friendship. Returning to Pasadena, Cameron consoled Parsons, painting a picture of Northrup with her legs severed below the knee. Parsons decided to sell The Parsonage, which was then demolished for redevelopment, and the couple moved to Manhattan Beach. On October 19, 1946, he and Cameron married at the San Juan Capistrano courthouse in Orange County, in a service witnessed by his best friend Edward Forman. Having an aversion to all religion, Cameron initially took no interest in Parsons' Thelemite beliefs and occult practices, although he maintained that she had an important destiny, giving her the magical name of "Candida", often shortened to "Candy", which became her nickname.
In the winter of 1947, Cameron travelled from New York to Paris aboard the SS America with the intention of studying art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, which she hoped would admit her with a letter of recommendation from Pasadena's Art Center School. She also wanted to visit England and meet with Crowley and explain to him Parsons' Babalon Working. Cameron learned upon her arrival in Paris that Crowley had died and that she had not been admitted to the college. She found post-war Paris "extreme and bleak", befriended Juliette Gréco, and spent three weeks in Switzerland before returning home. When Cameron developed catalepsy, Parsons suggested that she read Sylvan Muldoon's books on astral projection and encouraged her to read James Frazer's The Golden Bough, Heinrich Zimmer's The King and the Corpse, and Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Although she still did not accept Thelema, she became increasingly interested in the occult, and in particular the use of the tarot.
Parsons' and Cameron's relationship was deteriorating and they contemplated divorce. While Cameron visited the artistic commune at San Miguel de Allende in Mexico and befriended the artist Renate Druks, Parsons moved into a house in Redondo Beach and was involved in a brief relationship with an Irishwoman named Gladis Gohan before Cameron returned. By March 1951, Parsons and Cameron had moved to the coach house at 1071 South Orange Grove, while he began work at the Bermite Powder Company, constructing explosives for the film industry. They started holding parties once more that were attended largely by bohemians and members of the beat generation, and Cameron attended the jazz clubs of Central Avenue with her friend, the sculptor Julie Macdonald. Cameron produced illustrations for fashion magazines and sold some of her paintings, including some purchased by a friend, the artist Jirayr Zorthian. Parsons and Cameron had decided to travel to Mexico for a few months. On the day before they planned to leave—June 17, 1952—he received a rush order of explosives for a film set, and began work on the order at his house. In the midst of this project, an explosion destroyed the building, fatally wounding Parsons. He was rushed to hospital, but was declared dead. Cameron did not want to see his body and retreated to San Miguel, asking her friend George Frey to oversee the cremation.
### The Children, Kenneth Anger, and Curtis Harrington: 1952–1968
While in Mexico, Cameron began performing blood rituals in the hope of communicating with Parsons' spirit; during these, she cut her own wrists. As part of these rituals, she claimed to have received a new magical identity, Hilarion. When she heard that an unidentified flying object had allegedly been seen over Washington D.C.'s Capitol Building, she considered it a response to Parsons' death. After two months, she returned to California and attempted suicide. Increasingly interested in occultism, she read through her husband's papers. Embracing his Thelemic beliefs, she came to understand his purpose in carrying out the Babalon Working and also came to believe that the spirit of Babalon had been incarnated into herself. She came to believe that Parsons had been murdered by the police or anti-Zionists, and continued her attempts at astral projection to commune with his spirit.
Her mental stability was deteriorating, and she became convinced that a nuclear test on Eniwetok Atoll would result in the destruction of the California coast. There is inconclusive evidence that she was institutionalized in a psychiatric ward during this period, before having a brief affair with African-American jazz player Leroy Booth, a relationship that would have been illegal at the time. At some point in this period, she stayed with the Thelemite Wilfred Talbot Smith and his wife, although he thought that she had "bats in the belfry" and ignored what he described as her "Mad Mental Meanderings".
In December 1952, Cameron moved to a derelict ranch in Beaumont, California, about 90 miles (140 km) from Redondo Beach. With the aid of Druks and Paul Mathison, she gathered a loose clique of magical practitioners around herself which she called "The Children". Intentionally comprising members from various races, she oversaw a range of sex magic rituals with the intent of creating a breed of mixed-race "moonchildren" who would be devoted to Horus. She became pregnant as a result of these rites, and termed her forthcoming child "the Wormwood Star", although the pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Over time, many of Cameron's associates within The Children distanced themselves from her, in particular because of her increasingly apocalyptic pronouncements; she claimed that Mexico was about to conquer the U.S., that a race war was about to break out in the Old World, and that a comet would hit the Earth, and that a flying saucer would rescue her and her followers and take them to Mars. During her magical rituals she used a range of drugs, including marijuana, peyote, and magic mushrooms, and in June 1953 she visited Los Angeles to attend a Gerald Heard lecture on the mind-expanding uses of hallucinogens. Cameron was suffering from auditory hallucinations, frequent bouts of depression, and dramatic mood swings. During this period, she corresponded with the Thelemite Jane Wolfe, although other Thelemites and Crowley associates such as Karl Germer and Gerald Yorke deemed her insane.
After using the Chinese divination text the I Ching, Cameron returned to Los Angeles, moving in with Booth until the duo were arrested for illegal drug possession. Released on bail, she moved into Druks' Malibu home, and through her joined the avant-garde artistic circle surrounding the socialite Samson De Brier. It was through this circle that Cameron met the Thelemite film maker Kenneth Anger, and after a party titled "Come As Your Madness" which was organised by Mathison and Druks, he decided to produce a film featuring Cameron and others in the group. The resulting film was Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. After seeing the film, the English Thelemite Kenneth Grant wrote to Cameron hoping that she might move to England and join his London-based group, the New Isis Lodge; Cameron never responded.
Through common friends Cameron met Sheridan "Sherry" Kimmel, and the two entered a relationship. A veteran of the Second World War from Florida, Kimmel suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder, often causing him severe mood swings. He developed an interest in occultism and became intensely jealous of Parsons' continuing influence over Cameron, destroying Parsons' notes on the Babalon Working that she had kept. Cameron again became pregnant, although she was unsure who the father was. She gave birth to a daughter, Crystal Eve Kimmel, on Christmas Eve 1955. She allowed her daughter to behave how she pleased, believing that this was the best way for her to learn. With her friend, the film-maker Curtis Harrington, Cameron then produced a short film, The Wormwood Star, which was filmed at the home of multi-millionaire art collector Edward James; the film features images of Cameron's paintings, and recitations of her poems.
In autumn 1956, Cameron's first exhibition was held, at Walter Hopps's studio in Brentwood; several paintings were destroyed when the gallery caught fire. Around this time, Cameron was introduced to the actor Dean Stockwell at a public recital of her poetry; he then introduced her to his friend and fellow actor Dennis Hopper. She was also an associate of the artist Wallace Berman, who used a photograph of her on the front of the first volume of his art journal, Semina. The volume also included Cameron's drawing, Peyote Vision. This artwork was featured in Berman's 1957 exhibition at Los Angeles' Feris Gallery, which was raided and shut down by the police. Investigating officers claimed that Peyote Vision, which featured two copulating figures, was pornographic and indecent, thus legitimising their actions.
In late 1957, Cameron moved to San Francisco with her friends Norman Rose and David Metzer. There she mingled within the same bohemian social circles as many of the beat generation of artists and writers, and was a regular at avant-garde poetry readings. She began a relationship with the artist Burt Shonberg of Cafe Frankenstein, and with him moved into a ranch outside of Joshua Tree. Together they began exploring the subject of Ufology, and became friends with the ufologist George Van Tassel. After Kimmel was released from a psychiatric ward, Cameron re-established her relationship with him, and in 1959, they were married in a civil ceremony at Santa Monica City Hall; their relationship was strained and they separated soon after.
In 1960, Cameron appeared alongside Hopper in Harrington's first full-length film, Night Tide. The film was a critical success and—despite not receiving a wide distribution—became a cult classic. She was invited to appear in Harrington's next film, Games, although ultimately never did so. After Cameron moved to Venice, Los Angeles, a local arts shop exhibited her work in August 1961. On his return to the U.S. from Europe, Anger moved in with Cameron for a time, before the duo moved into a flat on Silverlake Boulevard in early 1964; Anger remained there before departing for New York City. According to Anger biographer Bill Landis, Cameron had become "a rather formidable maternal figure" in Anger's life. In October 1964, the Cinema Theatre in Los Angeles held an event known as The Transcendental Art of Cameron, which displayed her art and poetry and screened some of her films; Anger arrived and disrupted the event by objecting to the screening of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome without his permission. He then launched a poster campaign, The Cameron File, against his former friend, labelling her "Typhoid Mary of the Occult World". The pair later reconciled, Cameron visiting Anger in San Francisco, where he introduced her to Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan. LaVey was delighted to meet her, having been a fan of Night Tide.
### Later life: 1969–1995
In the latter part of the 1960s, Cameron and her daughter moved to the pueblos of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she developed a friendship with sculptor John Chamberlain and appeared in his art movie, Thumb Suck, which was never released. While in New Mexico she suffered a collapsed lung and required hospitalization. Her health was poor, as she suffered from chronic bronchitis and emphysema (both of which were exacerbated by her chain smoking), while hand tremors prevented her from being able to paint for four years. Returning to California, by 1969 she was living in the Pioneertown sector of Joshua Tree. From there she and her daughter moved to a small bungalow on North Genesee Avenue in the West Hollywood area of Los Angeles, which at the time had become impoverished and associated with crime, sex stores, and adult movie theatres; she remained there for the rest of her life.
By the mid-1980s, Cameron was focusing to a greater extent on her family life, particularly in looking after her grandchildren, who were known to go joyriding in her jeep. Neighbors recall her playing a Celtic harp in her garden and slowly walking her dog around the block while smoking a joint of marijuana. At one point, she was arrested for cultivating cannabis in her home. Cameron became a regular practitioner of Tai chi, took part in group sessions in Bronson Park under the tutelage of Marshall Ho'o, and earned a teaching certificate in the subject. She became very interested in José Argüelles' The Mayan Factor and Charles Musès' The Lion Path, and undertook the Neo-shamanic practices endorsed in the latter. She was also influenced by claims made in the writings of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas about a prehistoric matriarchal society devoted to a goddess. Cameron was very interested in A. S. Raleigh's Woman and Superwoman, taped her own reading of it, and sent copies to her friends and local public radio for broadcast. Throughout all of these disparate spiritual interests, she retained faith in the Thelemic ideas of Crowley.
As well as entertaining old friends who came to visit her in her home, Cameron also met with younger occultists, such as the Thelemite William Breeze and the industrial musician Genesis P-Orridge. Cameron aided Breeze in co-editing a collection of Parsons' occult and libertarian writings, which were published as Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword in 1989. Cameron was acquainted with the experimental film-maker Chick Strand and appeared in the latter's 1979 project Loose Ends, during which she narrated the story of an exorcism. In 1989, an exhibition of her work titled The Pearl of Reprisal was held at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. It included a selection of her paintings and a screening of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and The Wormwood Star, while Cameron attended to provide a candle-lit reading of her poetry.
## Death
In the mid-1990s, Cameron was diagnosed with a brain tumor and underwent radiotherapy treatment, which she supplemented with alternative medicines. The tumor was cancerous and metastasized to her lungs. She died at the age of 73 in the VA Medical Center on July 24, 1995, and underwent the Thelemic last rites, carried out by a high priestess of the Ordo Templi Orientis. Her body was cremated and her ashes were scattered in the Mojave Desert. A memorial event was held at Venice's Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in August.
## Personality
Cameron preferred to be known by her surname as a mononym. According to historian of Thelema Martin P. Starr, Cameron's "very dominating personality could not brook rivals of any kind". The fashion writer Tim Blanks noted that Cameron was "a charismatic woman" active in the mid-20th century "macho art world", and that it was not surprising how "alluring and dangerous" she must have seemed to Hopper and Stockwell.
Stockwell described Cameron as "a very, very intense personality, but very fascinating". Considering her to be "an out and out witch", Hopper described her as having an "infectious personality" through her presence; she was someone "that you knew [was] different and [she] had a magnetic quality that you wanted to be closer to". The photographer Charles Brittin, who knew Cameron on Los Angeles' artistic circuit, called her "a sweet person with a great personality, not the way some of her friends wanted to picture her to be". Her friend Shirley Berman described her as having "many different crowds of friends, and I think she was a different personality with each crowd ... She wasn't an even personality at all, but she was always a very gracious person."
## Artistic style
The digital media theorist Peter Lunenfeld described Cameron as "one of those people for whom art was life and life was art", and thus an understanding of her life is needed to appreciate her work. Cameron's occult beliefs strongly affected her artworks. According to Priscilla Frank, writing for The Huffington Post, Cameron's artwork merges "Crowley's occult with the surrealism and symbolism of French poets, yielding dark yet whimsical depictions buzzing with otherworldly power". The art curator Philippe Vergne described her work as being on "the edge of surrealism and psychedelia", embodying "an aspect of modernity that deeply doubts and defies cartesian logic at a moment in history when these values have shown their own limitations".
Lunenfeld compared Cameron's black and white pen-and-ink drawings to those of the English artist Aubrey Beardsley, noting that she was capable of a "ferocious, paradoxical line work—simultaneously precise and seductively unrestrained—that functions as both figurative depiction and unabashed emotional talisman". He believed that both "passion and craft" could be seen in her draughtsmanship, but that it also displayed "a guilelessness that is hard to relate to in our post post-ironic moment". He also discussed her lost multi-coloured watercolour paintings that were featured in Harrington's The Wormwood Star, suggesting that they were akin to a storyboard for an unrealised film by the director Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Cameron's biographer Spencer Kansa was of the opinion that Cameron exhibited parallels with the Australian artist and occultist Rosaleen Norton, both in terms of her physical appearance and the similarities between their artistic styles. Harrington also saw similarities in the work of Cameron and the artists Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini. On the website of the Cameron–Parsons Foundation, Michael Duncan expressed the view that Cameron's work rivals that of "fellow surrealists" like Carrington, Fini, Remedios Varo, and Ithell Colquhoun, while also appearing "fascinatingly prescient" of the works by later artists Kiki Smith, Amy Cutler, Karen Kilimmck, and Hernan Bas. In later years, Cameron would often be erroneously labelled a Beat artist because she inhabited many of the same social circles as prominent Beat poets and writers. Rejecting this label, Kansa instead described Cameron as "a pre-Beat bohemian, whose heart lay in Romanticism".
## Legacy
Cameron's reputation as an artist grew after her death. In 2006, her friend Scott Hobbs established the Cameron–Parsons Foundation to serve as an archive storing and promoting her work. In 1995, her painting Peyote Vision was included as part of an exhibition on "Beat Culture and the New American" held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Some of her artworks were then exhibited alongside those of Crowley and other Thelemites for the 2001 exhibition "Reflections of a New Aeon", held at the Eleven Seven Gallery in California's Long Beach. In 2007 a retrospective of Cameron's work was held at the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York City's Chelsea district, while that same year some of her works appeared in the traveling exhibition "Semina Culture", which was devoted to all of the artists who contributed to Wallace Berman's journal. In 2008, her painting Dark Angel was featured in the "Traces du Sacré" exhibit at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. In 2014, another retrospective, titled "Cameron: Songs for the Witch Woman", was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. That year, the U.K.-based publisher Fulgur Esoterica released a book featuring images of Cameron's artworks and Parsons' poems. In 2015, a retrospective of her work titled "Cameron: Cinderella of the Wastelands" was held at the Deitch Projects in Soho, New York City, which included an evening in which friends of Cameron's assembled to publicly discuss her legacy. Cameron's aesthetic also influenced the fashion world, designers Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor acknowledging Cameron as a partial inspiration for their Skaist-Taylor label.
Cameron's life was brought to wider attention through the publication of two biographies about Parsons: John Carter's Sex and Rockets and George Pendle's Strange Angel. A dramatization of Parsons' life was depicted in the play Moonchild, performed at The Access Theatre in 2004. Cameron was portrayed by Heather Tom. In 2011, Wormwood Star, a biography of Cameron authored by the Briton Spencer Kansa, was published, though it was not authorized by the Cameron–Parsons Foundation. Kansa had spent almost three years in the U.S. researching the book, interviewing many of those who knew Cameron, including several who died shortly after. Kansa stated that most of those whom he interviewed "were immensely generous with their time and recollections" but that "one of Cameron's kookier friends" had begun making claims that Kansa was not a biographer but was really an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Steffie Nelson noted that Kansa did "his due diligence tracking down Cameron's childhood acquaintances and friends" but at the same time was critical of the lack of sources or footnotes.
|
6,520,719 |
Colton Point State Park
| 1,168,172,850 |
State park in Pennsylvania, US
|
[
"1936 establishments in Pennsylvania",
"Allegheny Plateau",
"Campgrounds in Pennsylvania",
"Civilian Conservation Corps in Pennsylvania",
"Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania",
"National Register of Historic Places in Tioga County, Pennsylvania",
"Parks in Tioga County, Pennsylvania",
"Protected areas established in 1936",
"Protected areas of Tioga County, Pennsylvania",
"State parks of Pennsylvania"
] |
Colton Point State Park is a 368-acre (149 ha) Pennsylvania state park in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is on the west side of the Pine Creek Gorge, also known as the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania, which is 800 feet (240 m) deep and nearly 4,000 feet (1,200 m) across at this location. The park extends from the creek in the bottom of the gorge up to the rim and across part of the plateau to the west. Colton Point State Park is known for its views of the Pine Creek Gorge, and offers opportunities for picnicking, hiking, fishing and hunting, whitewater boating, and camping. Colton Point is surrounded by Tioga State Forest and its sister park, Leonard Harrison State Park, on the east rim. The park is on a state forest road in Shippen Township 5 miles (8 km) south of U.S. Route 6.
Pine Creek flows through the park and has carved the gorge through five major rock formations from the Devonian and Carboniferous periods. Native Americans once used the Pine Creek Path along the creek. The path was later used by lumbermen, and then became the course of a railroad from 1883 to 1988. Since 1996, the 62-mile (100 km) Pine Creek Rail Trail has followed the creek through the gorge. The Pine Creek Gorge was named a National Natural Landmark in 1968 and is also protected as a Pennsylvania State Natural Area and Important Bird Area, while Pine Creek is a Pennsylvania Scenic and Wild River. The gorge is home to many species of plants and animals, some of which have been reintroduced to the area.
The park is named for Henry Colton, a Williamsport lumberman who cut timber there starting in 1879. Although the Pine Creek Gorge was clearcut in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it is now covered by second-growth forest, thanks in part to the conservation efforts of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s. The CCC built the facilities at Colton Point before and shortly after the park's 1936 opening. Most of the CCC-built facilities remain in use, and have led to the park's listing as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. Since a successful publicity campaign in 1936, the park and gorge have been a popular tourist destination, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Colton Point State Park was chosen by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) Bureau of Parks for its "25 Must-See Pennsylvania State Parks" list, which praised its "spectacular vistas and a fabulous view of Pine Creek Gorge".
## History
### Native Americans
Humans have lived in what is now Pennsylvania since at least 10,000 BC. The first settlers were Paleo-Indian nomadic hunters known from their stone tools. The hunter-gatherers of the Archaic period, which lasted locally from 7000 to 1000 BC, used a greater variety of more sophisticated stone artifacts. The Woodland period marked the gradual transition to semi-permanent villages and horticulture, between 1000 BC and 1500 AD. Archeological evidence found in the state from this time includes a range of pottery types and styles, burial mounds, pipes, bows and arrows, and ornaments.
Colton Point State Park is in the West Branch Susquehanna River drainage basin, the earliest recorded inhabitants of which were the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks. They were a matriarchal society that lived in stockaded villages of large long houses, and "occasionally inhabited" the mountains surrounding the Pine Creek Gorge. Their numbers were greatly reduced by disease and warfare with the Five Nations of the Iroquois, and by 1675 they had died out, moved away, or been assimilated into other tribes.
After this, the lands of the West Branch Susquehanna River valley were under the nominal control of the Iroquois. The Iroquois lived in long houses, primarily in what is now New York, and had a strong confederacy which gave them power beyond their numbers. They and other tribes used the Pine Creek Path through the gorge, traveling between a path on the Genesee River in modern New York in the north, and the Great Shamokin Path along the West Branch Susquehanna River in the south. The Seneca tribe of the Iroquois believed that Pine Creek Gorge was sacred land and never established a permanent settlement there. They used the path through the gorge and had seasonal hunting camps along it, including one just north of the park near what would later be the village of Ansonia. To fill the void left by the demise of the Susquehannocks, the Iroquois encouraged displaced tribes from the east to settle in the West Branch watershed, including the Shawnee and Lenape (or Delaware).
The French and Indian War (1754–63) led to the migration of many Native Americans westward to the Ohio River basin. On November 5, 1768, the British acquired the New Purchase from the Iroquois in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, including what is now the Pine Creek Gorge east of the creek. The Purchase line established by this treaty was disputed, as it was unclear whether the border along "Tiadaghton Creek" referred to Pine Creek or to Lycoming Creek, further to the east. As a result, the land between them was disputed territory until 1784 and the Second Treaty of Fort Stanwix. After the American Revolutionary War, Native Americans almost entirely left Pennsylvania; some isolated bands of natives remained in Pine Creek Gorge until the War of 1812.
### Lumber era
Prior to the arrival of William Penn and his Quaker colonists in 1682, up to 90 percent of what is now Pennsylvania was covered with woods: more than 31,000 square miles (80,000 km<sup>2</sup>) of eastern white pine, eastern hemlock, and a mix of hardwoods. The forests near the three original counties, Philadelphia, Bucks, and Chester, were the first to be harvested, as the early settlers used the readily available timber and cleared land for agriculture. By the time of the American Revolution, logging had reached the interior and mountainous regions, and became a leading industry in Pennsylvania. Trees furnished fuel to heat homes, tannin for the state's many tanneries, and wood for construction, furniture, and barrel making. Large areas of forest were harvested by colliers to fire iron furnaces. Rifle stocks and shingles were made from Pennsylvania timber, as were a wide variety of household utensils, and the first Conestoga wagons.
By the early 19th century the demand for lumber reached the Pine Creek Gorge, where the surrounding mountainsides were covered with eastern white pine 3 to 6 feet (1 to 2 m) in diameter and 150 feet (50 m) or more tall, eastern hemlock 9 feet (3 m) in circumference, and huge hardwoods. Each acre (0.4 ha) of these virgin forests produced 100,000 board feet (200 m<sup>3</sup>) of white pine and 200,000 board feet (500 m<sup>3</sup>) of hemlock and hardwoods. For comparison, the same area of forest today produces a total of only 5,000 board feet (10 m<sup>3</sup>) on average. According to Steven E. Owlett, environmental lawyer and author, shipbuilders considered pine from Pine Creek the "best timber in the world for making fine ship masts", so it was the first lumber to be harvested on a large scale. The original title to the land that became Colton Point State Park was sold to the Wilhelm Wilkins Company in 1792. Pine Creek was declared a public highway by the Pennsylvania General Assembly on March 16, 1798, and rafts of spars were floated down the creek to the Susquehanna River, then to the Chesapeake Bay and the shipbuilders at Baltimore. The lumbermen would then walk home, following the old Pine Creek Path at the end of their journey.
As the 19th century progressed, fewer pines were left and more hemlocks and hardwoods were cut and processed locally. By 1810 there were 11 sawmills in the Pine Creek watershed, and by 1840 there were 145, despite a flood in 1832 which wiped out nearly all the mills along the creek. Selective harvesting of pines was replaced by clearcutting of all lumber in a tract. The first lumbering activity close to what is now Colton Point was in 1838 when William Dodge and partners built a settlement at Big Meadows and formed the Pennsylvania Joint Land and Lumber Company. Dodge's company purchased thousands of acres of land in the area, including what is now Colton Point State Park. In 1865 the last pine spar raft floated down the creek, and on March 28, 1871, the General Assembly passed a law which allowed construction of splash dams and allowed creeks to be cleared to allow loose logs to float better. The earliest spring log drives floated up to 20,000,000 board feet (50,000 m<sup>3</sup>) of logs in Pine Creek at one time. These logs floated to the West Branch Susquehanna River and to sawmills near the Susquehanna Boom at Williamsport. Log drives could be dangerous: just north of the park is Barbour Rock, named for Samuel Barbour, who lost his life on Pine Creek there after breaking up a log jam. Hemlock wood was not widely used until the advent of wire nails, but the bark was used to tan leather. After 1870 the largest tanneries in the world were in the Pine Creek watershed, and required 2,000 pounds (900 kg) of bark to produce 150 pounds (70 kg) of quality sole leather.
In 1879 Henry Colton, who worked for the Williamsport Lumber Company, supervised the cutting of white pine on the land owned by Silas Billings; this land would later become the park. Colton gave his name to the Colton Point overlook on the west rim of the Pine Creek Gorge. Deadman Hollow Road in the park is named for a trapper whose decomposed body was found in his own bear trap there in the early 20th century. Fourmile Run flows through the park: its O'Connor Branch is named for the dead trapper's brothers, who were loggers in the area.
In 1883 the Jersey Shore, Pine Creek and Buffalo Railway opened, following the creek through the gorge. The new railroad used the relatively level route along Pine Creek to link the New York Central Railroad (NYC) to the north with the Clearfield Coalfield to the southwest, and with NYC-allied lines in Williamsport to the southeast. By 1896 the rail line's daily traffic included three passenger trains and 7,000,000 short tons (6,400,000 t) of freight. In the surrounding forests, log drives gave way to logging railroads, which transported lumber to local sawmills. There were 13 companies operating logging railroads along Pine Creek and its tributaries between 1886 and 1921, while the last log drive in the Pine Creek watershed started on Little Pine Creek in 1905. By 1900 the Leetonia logging railroad was extended to the headwaters of Fourmile Run, which has several high waterfalls that prevented logs from being floated down it. In 1903 the line reached Colton Point and Bear Run, which is the northern border of the park today. Lumber on Fourmile Run that had been previously inaccessible was harvested and transported by train, initially to Leonard Harrison's mill at Tiadaghton. When that mill burned in 1905, the lumber went to the Leetonia mill on Cedar Run in Elk Township.
The old-growth forests were clearcut by the early 20th century and the gorge was stripped bare. Nothing was left except the dried-out tree tops, which became a fire hazard. As a result, much of the land burned and was left barren. On May 6, 1903, the Wellsboro newspaper had the headline "Wild Lands Aflame" and reported landslides through the gorge. The soil was depleted of nutrients, fires baked the ground hard, and jungles of blueberries, blackberries, and mountain laurel covered the clearcut land, which became known as the "Pennsylvania Desert". Floods swept the area periodically and much of the wildlife was wiped out.
### Conservation
George Washington Sears, an early conservationist who wrote under the pen name "Nessmuk", was one of the first to criticize the Pennsylvania lumber industry and its destruction of forests and creeks. In his 1884 book Woodcraft he wrote of the Pine Creek watershed where
> A huge tannery ... poisons and blackens the stream with chemicals, bark and ooze. ... The once fine covers and thickets are converted into fields thickly dotted with blackened stumps. And, to crown the desolation, heavy laden trains of 'The Pine Creek and Jersey Shore R.R.' go thundering [by] almost hourly ... Of course, this is progress; but, whether backward or forward, had better be decided sixty years hence.
Nessmuk's words went mostly unheeded in his lifetime and did not prevent the clearcutting of almost all the virgin forests in Pennsylvania.
Sears lived in Wellsboro from 1844 until his death in 1890, and was the first to describe the Pine Creek Gorge. He also described a trip to what became Leonard Harrison State Park and the view west across the gorge to what became Colton Point State Park: after a 6-mile (10 km) buggy ride, he had to hike 7 miles (11 km) through tangles of fallen trees and branches, down ravines, and over banks for five hours. At last he reached "The Point", which he wrote was "the jutting terminus of a high ridge which not only commands a capital view of the opposite mountain, but also of the Pine Creek Valley, up and down for miles".
The land on which Colton Point State Park sits was sold to the Commonwealth in the late 19th century for \$2.50 per acre (\$6.18/ha) by the Pennsylvania Joint Land and Lumber Company, which had no further use for it. Elsewhere in the gorge the state bought land abandoned by lumber companies, sometimes for less than \$2 per acre (\$4.94/ha). These purchases became the Tioga State Forest, which was officially established in 1925. As of 2015 the state forest encompasses 165,052 acres (66,794 ha), mostly in Tioga County, and surrounds Colton Point State Park to the north, west, and south. Leonard Harrison State Park is on the eastern border of Colton Point. In 1922, Wellsboro lumber baron Leonard Harrison donated his picnic grounds on the eastern rim of the gorge to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which named it "Leonard Harrison State Forest Park".
Harrison also built two cabins, named "Wetumka" and "Osocosy", on the west side of Pine Creek, just north of the mouth of Fourmile Run. Sometime after 1903, former Pennsylvania Governor William A. Stone built a cabin named "Heart's-ease" just south of the mouth of Fourmile Run. In 1966 these cabins were still standing and were three of "only four man-made structures inside the canyon proper", but by 1993 only Stone's cabin and one of Harrison's cabins remained. As of 2004, these properties were still owned by the Stone family, and are part of a small parcel of private land within the park.
### Modern era
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) started work on the park in June 1935, and it opened as "Colton Point State Forest Park" in 1936. The CCC, founded by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression, created jobs for unemployed young men from throughout the United States. Much of the work of the CCC at Colton Point is still visible as of 2015, and is one of many examples of the work of the CCC throughout northcentral Pennsylvania.
In 1936, the year the park opened, Larry Woodin of Wellsboro and other Tioga County business owners began a tourism campaign to promote the Pine Creek Gorge as "The Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania". Greyhound Bus Lines featured a view of the canyon from a Leonard Harrison lookout on the back cover of its Atlantic Coast timetable. The bus line's Chicago to New York City tour had an overnight stay in Wellsboro and a morning visit to the canyon for \$3. More than 300,000 tourists visited the canyon by the autumn of 1936, and 15,000 visited Leonard Harrison over Memorial Day weekend in 1937. That year more visitors came to the Pine Creek Gorge than to Yellowstone National Park. In response to the heavy use of the local roads, the CCC widened the highways in the area, and guides from the CCC gave tours of the canyon.
Colton Point originally opened with only "limited facilities", but the success of the tourism campaign led to the park's expansion by the CCC. New facilities were added in 1938, and included buildings such as picnic pavilions, latrines, and a concession stand, as well as "stone cook stoves, tables, and developed trails and overlooks ... an amazing amount of work in one year". The CCC also built the road to the park and planted stands of larch, spruce and white pine for reforestation. On February 12, 1987, the entire 368-acre (149 ha) park was listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), including "eight buildings and nine structures".
The park has five CCC-built picnic shelters: pavilions 1, 3, and 4 are made of stone and timber with stone fireplaces, while pavilions 2 and 5 each has log columns that support a pyramidal roof. The CCC also built six rustic latrines with clapboard siding and gable roofs, and an underground reservoir that is covered with a low hipped roof. Additional structures constructed by the CCC include three overlooks and a rectangular gable-roofed maintenance building with wane edge siding and exposed rafters made of logs. The structures built by the CCC are noteworthy in that they exemplify the rustic style of construction that was prevalent at national and state parks built during the Great Depression. Workers used locally found, natural materials in construction that blended with the natural surroundings. Not all of the CCC's work has survived. A concession stand was built by the CCC and sold food and souvenirs from the late 1930s to at least 1953, but was not listed on the 1986 NRHP nomination form. The CCC also built a brick and stone incinerator, but it is in ruins now.
The Pennsylvania Geographic Board dropped the word "Forest" and officially named it "Colton Point State Park" on November 11, 1954. The first major change in the park was in 1970, when a camping area was established. That same decade saw the completion of a new water system in 1973, and a holding tank dump station was added to the camping area in 1977. A park office was built in 1983, but as of 2009 the park headquarters are in the adjoining Leonard Harrison State Park and the Colton Point office does not appear on the official park map. Pine Creek was named a state scenic river on December 4, 1992, which ensured further protection of Pine Creek Gorge in its natural state. In 1997 the park's Important Bird Area (IBA) was one of the first 73 IBAs established in Pennsylvania. In 2000 the park became part of the Hills Creek State Park complex, an administrative grouping of eight state parks in Potter and Tioga counties. As of 2004, the park does not have telephone or electrical lines, although it uses solar cells for limited electricity needs.
The second half of the 20th century also saw significant changes to the rail line through the Pine Creek Gorge. Regular passenger service on the canyon line ended after the Second World War, and in 1960 the second set of train tracks was removed. Conrail abandoned the section of the railroad that passed through the gorge on September 21, 1988. The right-of-way eventually became the Pine Creek Rail Trail, which follows the path of the former Pine Creek Path. The first section of the rail trail opened in 1996 and included the 1-mile (1.6 km) section in the park: as of 2015 the Pine Creek Rail Trail is 62 miles (100 km) long.
Colton Point State Park continued to attract national attention in the post-war era. The New York Times featured the park and its "breath-taking views of the gorge" as well as its trails and location in the wilds of the state forest in a 1950 article, and in 1966 praised the whitewater boating on Pine Creek and the park's "outstanding look-out points". The Pine Creek Gorge, including Colton Point and Leonard Harrison State Parks and a 12-mile (19 km) section of Tioga State Forest, was named a National Natural Landmark (NNL) in April 1968. A 1973 New York Times article on whitewater canoeing noted the damage along Pine Creek done by Hurricane Agnes the year before. Another Times story in 2002 noted the park for its beauty and wildlife, and cited it as a starting point for hiking the West Rim Trail.
In the new millennium, the two state parks on either side of the Pine Creek Gorge are frequently treated as one. A 2002 New York Times article called Colton Point and Leonard Harrison state parks "Two State Parks, Divided by a Canyon" and noted their "overlooks offer the most spectacular views". Colton Point and Leonard Harrison were each included in the list of state parks chosen by the DCNR Pennsylvania Bureau of Parks for its "25 Must-See Pennsylvania State Parks" list. The DCNR describes how they "offer spectacular vistas and a fabulous view of Pine Creek Gorge, also known as Pennsylvania's Grand Canyon". It goes on to praise their inclusion in a National Natural Landmark and State Park Natural Area, hiking and trails, and the Pine Creek Rail Trail and bicycling.
## Pine Creek Gorge
Colton Point State Park lies on the west side of the Pine Creek Gorge, also known as the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania. A sister park, Leonard Harrison State Park, is on the east side, and the two parks combined form essentially one large park that includes parts of the gorge and creek and parts of the plateau dissected by the gorge. Pine Creek has carved the gorge nearly 47 miles (76 km) through the dissected Allegheny Plateau in northcentral Pennsylvania. The canyon begins in southwestern Tioga County, just south of the village of Ansonia, and continues south to near the village of Waterville in Lycoming County. The depth of the gorge in Colton Point State Park is about 800 feet (240 m) and it measures nearly 4,000 feet (1,200 m) across.
The Pine Creek Gorge National Natural Landmark includes Colton Point and Leonard Harrison State Parks and parts of the Tioga State Forest along 12 miles (19 km) of Pine Creek between Ansonia and Blackwell. This federal program does not provide any extra protection beyond that offered by the land owner. The National Park Service's designation of the gorge as a National Natural Landmark notes that it "contains superlative scenery, geological and ecological value, and is one of the finest examples of a deep gorge in the eastern United States."
The gorge is also protected by the state of Pennsylvania as the 12,163-acre (4,922 ha) Pine Creek Gorge Natural Area, which is the second largest State Natural Area in Pennsylvania. Within this area, 699 acres (283 ha) of Colton Point and Leonard Harrison State Parks are designated a State Park Natural Area. The state Natural Area runs along Pine Creek from Darling Run in the north (just below Ansonia) to Jerry Run in the south (just above Blackwell). It is approximately 12 miles (19 km) long and 2 miles (3 km) wide, with state forest roads providing all of the western border and part of the eastern border.
Within the park, Pine Creek and the walls of the gorge "visible from the opposite shoreline" are also protected by the state as a Pennsylvania Scenic River. In 1968 Pine Creek was one of only 27 rivers originally designated as eligible to be included in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, and one of only eight specifically mentioned in the law establishing the program. Before Pine Creek could be included in the federal program, the state enacted its State Scenic Rivers Act, then asked that Pine Creek be withdrawn from the national designation. There was much local opposition to its inclusion, based at least partly on mistaken fears that protection would involve seizure of private property and restricted access. Eventually this opposition was overcome, but Pennsylvania did not officially include it as one of its own state Scenic and Wild Rivers until November 25, 1992. The state treated Pine Creek as a state scenic river between 1968 and 1992. It protected the creek from dam-building and water withdrawals for power plants, and added public access points to reduce trespassing on private property by visitors to the creek.
## Geology and climate
Although the rock formations exposed in Colton Point State Park and the Pine Creek Gorge are at least 300 million years old, the gorge itself formed about 20,000 years ago, in the last ice age. Pine Creek had flowed northeasterly until then, but was dammed by rocks, soil, ice, and other debris deposited by the receding Laurentide Continental Glacier. The dammed creek formed a lake near what would later be the village of Ansonia, and the lake's glacial meltwater overflowed the debris dam, reversing the flow of Pine Creek. The creek flooded to the south and quickly carved a deep channel on its way to the West Branch Susquehanna River.
The park is at an elevation of 1,637 feet (499 m) on the Allegheny Plateau, which formed in the Alleghenian orogeny some 300 million years ago, when Gondwana (specifically what became Africa) and what became North America collided, forming Pangaea. Although the gorge and its surroundings seem to be mountainous, the area is a dissected plateau. Years of erosion have cut away the soft rocks, forming the valleys, and left the hardest of the ancient rocks relatively untouched on the top of sharp ridges, giving them the appearance of "mountains".
The land on which Colton Point State Park sits was once part of the coastline of a shallow sea that covered a great portion of what is now North America. The high mountains to the east of the sea gradually eroded, causing a buildup of sediment made up primarily of clay, sand and gravel. Tremendous pressure on the sediment caused the formation of the rocks that are found today in the Pine Creek drainage basin: sandstone, shale, conglomerates, limestone, and coal.
Five major rock formations present in Colton Point State Park are from the Devonian and Carboniferous periods. The youngest of these, which forms the highest points in the park and along the gorge, is the early Pennsylvanian Pottsville Formation, a gray conglomerate that may contain sandstone, siltstone, and shale, as well as anthracite coal. Low-sulfur coal was once mined at three locations within the Pine Creek watershed. Below this is the late Mississippian Mauch Chunk Formation, which is formed with grayish-red shale, siltstone, sandstone, and conglomerate. Millstones were once carved from the exposed sections of this conglomerate. Together the Pottsville and Mauch Chunk formations are some 300 feet (91 m) thick.
Next below these is the late Devonian and early Mississippian Huntley Mountain Formation, which is made of relatively soft grayish-red shale and olive-gray sandstone. This is relatively hard rock and forms many of the ridges. Below this is the red shale and siltstone of the Catskill Formation, about 760 feet (230 m) thick and some 375 million years old. This layer is relatively soft and easily eroded, which helped to form the Pine Creek Gorge. Cliffs formed by the Huntley Mountain and Catskill formations are visible north of the park at Barbour Rock. The lowest and oldest layer is the Lock Haven Formation, which is gray to green-brown siltstone and shale over 400 million years old. It forms the base of the gorge, contains marine fossils, and is up to 600 feet (180 m) thick.
The Allegheny Plateau has a continental climate, with occasional severe low temperatures in winter and average daily temperature ranges of 20 °F (11 °C) in winter and 26 °F (14 °C) in summer. The mean annual precipitation for the Pine Creek watershed is 36 to 42 inches (914 to 1,070 mm). The highest recorded temperature at the park was 104 °F (40 °C) in 1936, and the record low was −30 °F (−34 °C) in 1934.
## Ecology
Descriptions from early explorers and settlers give some idea of what the Pine Creek Gorge was like before it was clearcut. The forest was up to 85 percent hemlock and white pine; hardwoods made up the rest of the forest. The area was inhabited by a large number of animal species, many of which have vanished by the end of the 20th century. A herd of 12,000 American bison migrated along the West Branch Susquehanna River in 1773. Pine Creek was home to large predators such as wolves, lynx, wolverines, panthers, fishers, bobcats and foxes; all are locally extinct except for the last three as of 2007. The area had herds of elk and deer, and large numbers of black bears, river otters, and beavers. In 1794, two of the earliest white explorers to travel up Pine Creek found so many rattlesnakes on its banks that they had to sleep in their canoe. Further upstream, insects forced them to do the same.
The virgin forests cooled the land and streams. The creeks and runs flowed more evenly year-round, since centuries of accumulated organic matter in the forest soil caused slow percolation of rainfall into them. Pine Creek was home to large numbers of fish, including trout, but dams downstream on the Susquehanna River have eliminated the shad, salmon, and eels once found here by blocking their migrations. Habitat for land animals was destroyed by the clearcutting of forests, but there was also a great deal of hunting, with bounties paid for large predators.
### State Natural Area and wildlife
While Colton Point and Leonard Harrison State Parks and parts of the surrounding Tioga State Forest are now the Pine Creek Gorge National Natural Landmark, it is their status as part of a Pennsylvania State Natural Area that provides the strongest protection for them. Within this Natural Area, logging, mining, and drilling for oil and gas are prohibited. Furthermore, only foot trail access is allowed. In 1988 the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources, precursor to the DCNR, described it as
> about 95% State owned, unroaded, and designated the Pine Creek Gorge Natural Area. It is a place of unique geologic history and contains some rare plant communities, an old growth hemlock stand, ... active bald eagle nest[s] ... and is a major site of river otter reintroduction. Departmental policy is protection of the natural values of the Canyon from development and overuse, and restoration of the area to as near a natural condition as possible.
The gorge has over 225 species of wildflowers, plants and trees, with scattered stands of old growth forest on some of its steepest walls. The rest of the gorge is covered with thriving second growth forest that can be over one hundred years old. Since clearcutting, nearly 90 percent of the forest land has burnt at least once. Typical south-facing slopes here have mountain laurel below oak and hickory trees, while north-facing slopes tend to have ferns below hemlocks and hardwoods. Large chestnuts and black cherry can also be found.
The Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania is known for its fall foliage, and Colton Point State Park is a popular place to observe the colors, with the first three weeks of October as the best time to see the leaves in their full color. Red leaves are found on red maple, black cherry, and red oak, while orange and yellow leaves are on black walnut, sugar maple, tulip poplar, chestnut oak, aspen and birch, and brown leaves are from beech, white oak, and eastern black oak trees. Despite the logging, there are some old-growth hardwoods and hemlocks on Fourmile Run. Plants of "special concern" in Pennsylvania that are found in the gorge include Jacob's ladder, wild pea, and hemlock parsley.
There are over 40 species of mammals in the Pine Creek Gorge. Colton Point State Park's extensive forest cover makes it a habitat for "big woods" wildlife, including white-tailed deer, black bear, wild turkey, red and gray squirrels. Less common creatures include bobcats, coyote, fishers, river otters, and timber rattlesnakes. There are over 26 species of fish in Pine Creek, including trout, suckers, fallfish, and rock bass. Other aquatic species include crayfish and frogs.
Several species have been reintroduced to the gorge. White-tailed deer were imported from Michigan and released throughout Pennsylvania to reestablish what had once been a thriving population. The current population of deer in Pennsylvania are descended from the original stock introduced since 1906, after the lumbermen had moved out of the area. The deer population has grown so much that today they exceed their carrying capacity in many areas. River otters were successfully reintroduced in 1983 and now breed in the gorge. Despite the otters' diet of 5 percent trout, some anglers fear the animals would deplete the game fish in the gorge.
Fishers, medium-sized weasels, were reintroduced to Pine Creek Gorge as part of an effort to establish a healthy population of fishers in Pennsylvania. Prior to the lumber era, fishers were numerous throughout the forests of Pennsylvania. They are generalized predators and will hunt any smaller creatures in their territory, including porcupines. Elk have been reintroduced west of the gorge in Clinton County and occasionally wander near the west rim of the canyon. Coyotes have come back on their own. Invasive insect species in the gorge include gypsy moth larvae, which eat all the leaves off trees, especially oaks, and hemlock woolly adelgids, which weaken and kill hemlocks. Invasive plant species include purple loosestrife and Japanese knotweed.
### Important Bird Area
Colton Point State Park is part of Important Bird Area \#28, which encompasses 31,790 acres (12,860 ha) of both publicly and private held land. State managed acreage accounts for 68 percent of the total area and includes Colton Point and Leonard Harrison State Parks and the surrounding Tioga State Forest lands. The Pennsylvania Audubon Society has designated all 368 acres (149 ha) of Colton Point State Park as part of the IBA, which is an area designated as a globally important habitat for the conservation of bird populations.
Ornithologists and bird watchers have recorded a total of 128 species of birds in the IBA. Several factors contribute to the high total of bird species observed: there is a large area of forest in the IBA, as well as great habitat diversity, with 343 acres (139 ha) of open water that is used by many of the birds, especially bald eagles. The location of the IBA along the Pine Creek Gorge also contributes to the diverse bird populations.
In addition to bald eagles, which live in the IBA year round and have successfully established a breeding population there, the IBA is home to belted kingfishers, scarlet tanagers, black-throated blue warblers, common mergansers, blue and green herons, hermit thrushes, and wood ducks. Large numbers of ospreys use the gorge during spring and fall migration periods. The woodlands are inhabited by wild turkeys and Pennsylvania's state bird the ruffed grouse. Swainson's thrush breeds in the IBA and the Northern harrier breeds and overwinters in Pine Creek Gorge.
A variety of warblers is found in Colton Point State Park. The Pennsylvania Audubon Society states that Pine Creek Gorge is "especially rich in warbler species, including Pine, Black-throated blue, Black-throated green, Blackburnian, and Black-and-white." Many of these smaller birds are more often heard than seen as they keep away from the trails and overlooks.
## Recreation
### Trails
Colton Point State Park has some challenging hikes in and around the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania, with 4.0 miles (6.4 km) of trails that feature very rugged terrain, pass close to steep cliffs, and can be very slick in some areas. Governor Robert P. Casey took a hiking tour of the park in July 1990, and in 2003 the DCNR reported that 18,239 people used the trails in the park.
- Rim Trail (yellow trail markers) is a relatively flat 1-mile (1.6 km) loop trail, which follows the perimeter of Colton Point and links all of the canyon viewing areas.
- Turkey Path (blue trail markers) is a difficult trail, 3 miles (5 km) long (down and back within the park), that follows Four Mile Run down the side of the canyon, descending over 800 feet (240 m) to Pine Creek and the rail trail at the bottom of the gorge. It was originally a mule drag used to haul timber to the creek. There is a 70-foot-tall (21 m) cascading waterfall about 0.5 miles (0.80 km) down the trail. The park website classifies it as a "down and back trail" since there is no bridge across Pine Creek. The Turkey Path continues in Leonard Harrison State Park, going from a point on Pine Creek just downstream of the end of the trail in Colton Point up to the Leoanrd Harrison overlook on the east rim of the gorge. According to Owlett, the creek can be forded with care when the water is low, and the Turkey Path connects the two parks.
- Pine Creek Rail Trail is a 62-mile-long (100 km) rail trail from Wellsboro Junction, just north of Wellsboro, south through the Pine Creek Gorge to Jersey Shore: 1 mile (1.6 km) of this trail is in Colton Point and Leonard Harrison State Parks. A 2001 article in USA Today said the scenic beauty of the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania made the trail one of "10 great places to take a bike tour" in the world.
- West Rim Trail is a 30.5-mile-long (49.1 km) hiking trail that runs along the west rim of the Pine Creek Gorge from near the village of Ansonia in the north to Rattlesnake Rock near the village of Blackwell in the south. It is mostly on Tioga State Forest land, but passes through the extreme north of the park and then forms the western border of the park in the south. When the West Rim Trail opened in 1982, it was 21 miles (34 km) long and ended just south of the park, but it was extended 9 miles (14 km) north in 1985, passing through Colton Point. It was chosen by Outside Magazine as its "Best Hike in Pennsylvania" in April 1996.
### Camping and picnics
Camping is a popular pastime at Colton Point State Park; 1,989 persons have used the camping facilities in 2003. With no modern amenities like flush toilets or showers, the campsites take on a rustic nature. There are outhouses, fire rings, a sanitary dump station and picnic tables at the campground. An Organized Group Tenting area, intended for organized youth or adult groups, can accommodate up to 90 campers. 1,490 campers used the area in 2003. The park also has approximately 100 picnic tables and five CCC-built picnic shelters which can be reserved. These facilities were used by 15,379 picnickers in 2003.
### Hunting, fishing, and whitewater
Hunting is permitted in 100 acres (40 ha) of Colton Point State Park, and is regulated by the Pennsylvania Game Commission. The common game species are ruffed grouse, eastern gray squirrels, wild turkey, white-tailed deer, and black bears. The hunting of groundhogs is prohibited. More acres of forested woodlands are available for hunting on the grounds of the adjacent Tioga State Forest.
Fishing is permitted at Colton Point State Park. Anglers must descend the Turkey Path to reach Pine Creek. The species of fish found in Pine Creek are trout, smallmouth bass, and some panfish. There are several small trout streams that are accessible from within the park. Historically, the stretch of Pine Creek in the park has been fished by notable anglers, including President Theodore Roosevelt and Pennsylvania Governor William A. Stone.
Edward Gertler writes in Keystone Canoeing that Pine Creek "is possibly Pennsylvania's most famous canoe stream" and attributes this partly to the thousands who decide to boat on it after they "peer into Pine Creek's spectacular abyss from the overlooks of Leonard Harrison and Colton Point state parks". The park contains 1 mile (1.6 km) of Pine Creek, which is classified as Class 1 to Class 2 whitewater. Boaters do not normally start or end their run in the park: it is part of the 16.8-mile (27.0 km) trip from Ansonia (Marsh Creek) south to Blackwell (Babb Creek).
## Nearby state parks
Colton Point State Park is in Shippen Township, and is 5 miles (8 km) south of U.S. Route 6 and the village of Ansonia on Colton Road. The following state parks are within 30 miles (50 km) of Colton Point State Park:
|
8,988,546 |
Lord of the Universe
| 1,163,714,289 |
1974 film by Michael Shamberg
|
[
"1970s American films",
"1970s English-language films",
"1974 documentary films",
"1974 films",
"American documentary television films",
"Films about religion",
"Films set in Texas",
"Prem Rawat",
"Television series by WNET"
] |
Lord of the Universe is a 1974 American documentary film about Prem Rawat (at the time known as Guru Maharaj Ji) at an event in November 1973 at the Houston Astrodome called "Millennium '73". Lord of the Universe was first broadcast on PBS on February 2, 1974, and released in VHS format on November 1, 1991. The documentary chronicles Maharaj Ji, his followers and anti-Vietnam War activist Rennie Davis who was a spokesperson of the Divine Light Mission at the time. A counterpoint is presented by Davis' Chicago Seven co-defendant Abbie Hoffman, who appears as a commentator. It includes interviews with several individuals, including followers, ex-followers, a mahatma, a born-again Christian, and a follower of Hare Krishna.
The production team of Top Value Television produced the documentary, using Portapak video cameras. The TVTV team followed Maharaj Ji across the United States over a period of six weeks, and edited a large amount of tape down to the fifty-eight-minute piece. It was the first documentary made on 1⁄2 in (13 mm) video tape broadcast nationally, and also the first independent video documentary shown on national public television.
The documentary was generally well-received, and garnered its TVTV production team the 1974 Alfred I. du Pont/Columbia University Award in Broadcast Journalism. The documentary received a negative review in the New York Post, and positive reviews in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times. The San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote that the TVTV team had improved since their previous work but wanted them to move on to more challenging subjects.
## Content
The documentary chronicles Guru Maharaj Ji, the Divine Light Mission, his followers and anti-Vietnam War activist Rennie Davis at "Millennium '73", an event held at the Houston Astrodome in November 1973. Rennie Davis, a follower of Guru Maharaj Ji, was one of the spokespersons and speakers at the "Millennium '73" event. His speech is featured in the documentary.
Abbie Hoffman appears as a commentator in the documentary and addresses some points raised in Davis's speech, stating: "It's rather arrogant of Rennie to say that he has found God and has his Telex number in his wallet." The TVTV crew interviewed different "premies", or followers of Prem Rawat, throughout the film, and one teenage boy is shown stating: "Before I came to the Guru I was a freak, smoking dope and dropping out – and my parents were happier then than they are with this." In a later part of the film, a loudspeaker voice announces: "Those premies who came in private cars can leave now. Those who came in rented buses can stay and meditate until further notice." Adherents of other belief systems also appear in the documentary, including a born-again Christian who criticizes devotees for "following the devil", and a Hare Krishna follower.
A separate storyline is seen concurrently through the coverage of the "Millennium '73" event, involving a man named Michael who has come to Houston, Texas, to receive "Knowledge" from Maharaj Ji. Once Michael has received the "Knowledge", he defends the secrecy behind the rituals. Michael's experiences are contrasted in the documentary with interviews with "ex-premies" or former followers of Maharaj Ji, recounting their initiation and later disillusionment with Maharaj Ji's teachings. One of them says that after receiving "Knowledge" from Maharaj Ji, he was told that this free gift required lifetime devotion and donations of "worldly goods".
Maharaj Ji is shown in a scene in the Astrodome relating a satsang to the attendants. He is seen dressed in gold-colored clothing and a crown, and sits on a platform throne. The story he relates to the crowd involves a young boy who comes to Houston, while searching for a Superman comic book. While seated on the platform, Maharaj Ji is surrounded by flashing moon signs and women wearing decorative garlands, while the band Blue Aquarius plays his theme song. The stage is decorated with glitter and neon lights, and Maharaj Ji's brother performs rock music songs. Abbie Hoffman gives a final comment in the documentary, stating: "If this guy is God, this is the God the United States of America deserves."
## Production
The documentary was produced by Top Value Television (TVTV) in association with TV Lab, and was primarily directed by Michael Shamberg. TVTV had received initial funding for the documentary through a small grant from the Stern Foundation, and an additional promise from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. David Loxton arranged a post-production budget of US\$4,000, and the total production costs for the documentary amounted to \$36,000 – about forty-five percent of the average costs for a PBS film production at the time. Several camera crews used 1⁄2 in (13 mm) black and white portapaks and followed Maharaj Ji and his group across the United States for six weeks. The TVTV production team debated whether to include the secret techniques of Maharaj Ji in the documentary and finally decided that it was vital to disclose these practices in the piece. They chose to have an ex-premie divulge these practices rather than use a narration, but they were fearful of potential repercussions, which never came. TVTV member Tom Weinberg found a man who demonstrated meditation techniques in the documentary, which he described as being the "Knowledge". Producer Megan Williams stated that TVTV crew members empathized with the experiences of Maharaj Ji's followers, because there was very little age difference between them and the TVTV production team. Nevertheless, many in the crew of TVTV felt superior to these "lost souls" describing the followers as "gurunoids".
At the end of filming, eighty-two hours of tape were edited to the final fifty-eight-minute documentary piece. TVTV's team utilized graphics, live music, and wide angle lens shots. Stop-action sequences where quotations flash on the screen were also used for effect. The production was the first Portapak video documentary made for national television, and the "first program originally made on 1⁄2 in (13 mm) video tape to be broadcast nationally". Lord of the Universe was also: "The first independent video documentary made for national broadcast on public television." The trailer was originally broadcast on WNET Channel Thirteen television. Lord of the Universe was shown to a national audience in the United States on February 2, 1974, broadcast on 240 stations of the Public Broadcasting Service. It aired a second time on July 12, 1974. Later TVTV productions broadcast on public television included Gerald Ford's America, and a 1975 program on Cajuns The Good Times Are Killing Me.
In 1989, the documentary was included in an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art on video art called "Image World: Art and Media Culture". The documentary was re-released to VHS on November 1, 1991, by Subtle Communications. On the packaging it is claimed that Guru Maharaj Ji "promised to levitate the Astrodome". Sources including TVRO, the library of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Art Journal repeat this statement in varying forms. The documentary was screened in August 2006 at The Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Scotland, as part of the Camcorder Guerilla cinema programme.
## Reception
### Reviews
Ron Powers of the Chicago Sun Times called the documentary "highly recommended viewing", and described it as: "... both as an example of skeptical, unimpressed (but never vicious) journalism, and as a peek into the future of television ... a clever, ironic and eventually devastating documentary". Electronic Arts Intermix described Lord of the Universe as "a forceful expose on the sixteen-year-old Guru Maharaj Ji and the national gathering of his followers at the Houston Astrodome". Michael Blowen of The Boston Globe wrote that the documentary "captures the absurdity of Millennium '73", and that "The desperation of flower people alienated from politics is both touching and hilarious as they offer hope for eternal life to other converts."
Dick Adler of the Los Angeles Times gave the documentary a positive review, writing: "'The Lord of the Universe' doesn't really take sides, which doesn't mean it's a bland hour trying to please everybody. Its considerable bite comes first from the material TVTV so carefully gathered and there from the artfully wise frame in which it chose to present it." Deirdre Boyle wrote in Art Journal that the piece was "the zenith of TVTV's guerrilla-TV style". According to Boyle's Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited, as in all TVTV tapes, everyone in the documentary comes across as foolish, describing the production's sarcasm as the "ultimate leveler" using equal irony "both with the mighty and the lowly".
Katy Butler wrote in the San Francisco Bay Guardian that the TVTV style had improved since their previous work: "This show has fewer interjections from TVTV personnel, fewer moments that drag, more technological razzle-dazzle (color footage, slow motion, stop motion, tight and rapid cutting)." However, she described Guru Maharaj Ji and his entourage as "an easy target" and wrote that "anybody can look like a fool when a smartass wide angle lens distorts their face, and teenage ex-dopers who think a fat boy is God don't stand a chance". Butler wished that TVTV would move on to more challenging subjects for their future work. Bob Williams of the New York Post called the documentary a "deplorable film" and "flat, pointless, television". He wrote: "The hour-long program was remiss in not providing some small examination of the available box-office take of the goofy kid guru, much less telling prospective contributors how it got involved in spending how much of its foundation grants and viewer subscription money in such a questionable venture without more inquisitive journalistic endeavor, or ignoring gurus."
A review in The Oakland Tribune described the film as "a fascinating hour documentary on the guru's three-day happening at the Houston Astrodome", and commented that the event was "deftly captured by the mobile video cameras of TVTV, a group of talented young tapemakers". John J. O'Connor of The New York Times described TVTV's work as "a terrific documentary" and complimented the team on the visual results of the piece: "After TVTV superbly dissected the guru, his 'holy family' and his followers, more objective viewers might have chosen to laugh, cry, or throw up." In a later piece by O'Connor in 1975, he wrote that TVTV "gained a respectable measure of national success with 'The Lord of the Universe'".
### Accolades
The documentary received the 1974 "Alfred I. du Pont/Columbia University Award in Broadcast Journalism" (DuPont Award). The jurors from the 1974 DuPont-Columbia awards stated that the documentary was: "hectic, hilarious and not a little disquieting. With a heavier and less sure hand, the subject would have been squashed beneath the reporters’ irony or contempt. As it was, cult religion was handed to us, live and quivering, to make of it what we would." The group's work impressed WNET president John Jay Iselin, and he raised additional funds that helped TVTV to produce five more programs, including Gerald Ford's America.
## Credits
## See also
- List of American films of 1974
|
12,174,949 |
Eremoryzomys
| 1,072,638,023 |
Rodent species in the family Cricetidae from central Peru
|
[
"Mammals described in 1913",
"Mammals of Peru",
"Monotypic rodent genera",
"Oryzomyini",
"Taxa named by Alexandre Reis Percequillo",
"Taxa named by Marcelo Weksler",
"Taxonomy articles created by Polbot"
] |
Eremoryzomys polius, also known as the gray rice rat or the Marañon oryzomys, is a rodent species in the tribe Oryzomyini of the family Cricetidae. Discovered in 1912 and first described in 1913 by Wilfred Osgood, it was originally placed in Oryzomys and named Oryzomys polius. In 2006, a cladistic analysis found that it was not closely related to Oryzomys in the strict sense or to any other oryzomyine then known, so that it is now placed in its own genus, Eremoryzomys. The Brazilian genus Drymoreomys, named in 2011, is probably the closest relative of Eremoryzomys. Eremoryzomys has a limited distribution in the dry upper valley of the Marañón River in central Peru, but may yet contain more than one species.
A large, long-tailed rice rat, with head and body length of 138 to 164 mm (5.4 to 6.5 in), E. polius has gray fur and short ears. There are well-developed ungual tufts of hair on the hindfeet. Females have eight mammae. The rostrum (front part of the skull) is long and robust and the braincase is rounded. The bony palate is relatively short. The IUCN assesses the conservation status of the species as "Data Deficient"; it is poorly known but may be threatened by habitat destruction.
## Taxonomy
The first two specimens of Eremoryzomys polius were collected by Wilfred Osgood and M.P. Anderson in 1912. The next year, Osgood described these animals as a new species in the genus Oryzomys, Oryzomys polius. Osgood wrote that he was unable to find any species closely related to O. polius and compared it with O. xanthaeolus (currently Aegialomys xanthaeolus) "for convenience". Its relationships remained obscure ever afterward and it was never assigned to any of the several groups of species recognized within Oryzomys.
In 2006, Marcelo Weksler published a large-scale cladistic analysis of Oryzomyini ("rice rats"), the tribe to which O. polius belongs. He used both morphological data and molecular characters from the IRBP gene. In all of his analyses, O. polius was found to be part of clade D, one of four large groups within Oryzomyini, as the sister group to a clade containing all the other species of clade D. Clade D was supported by two shared derived (synapomorphic) molecular characters and by seven morphological synapomorphies—the tail has a different color above and below; the parietal bone extends to the side of the skull; the incisive foramina (openings in the palate) extend back between the first molars; the posterolateral palatal pits (perforations of the palate near the third molars) are complex; the sphenopalatine vacuities (openings in the mesopterygoid fossa, the gap behind the end of the palate) are large; the pattern of the arterial circulation in the head is derived; and the posteroloph (a crest at the back) is present on the third upper molar. Two other molecular synapomorphies supported the clade of all members of clade D except O. polius, coupled with three morphological traits—in these species, but not in O. polius, the first upper molar has an additional small root at the outer (labial) side; the first lower molar has additional small roots; and the second upper molar has the mesoflexus (one of the valleys between the cusps and crests) divided in two.
In Weksler's analysis, species placed in Oryzomys did not form a coherent (monophyletic) group, but instead were found at various positions across the oryzomyine tree, and he suggested that most of these species, including O. polius, should be placed in new genera. Later in 2006, Weksler and others described ten new genera for species formerly placed in Oryzomys, including Eremoryzomys for polius; thus, the species is now known as Eremoryzomys polius. In reference to its "isolated distribution", they incorporated the Greek word eremia "lonely place" into the generic name. The 2008 IUCN Red List, citing Pacheco, commented that Eremoryzomys may in fact include more than one species. In 2011, a new oryzomyine, Drymoreomys albimaculatus, was described from southeastern Brazil, and phylogenetic analysis of morphological and molecular data suggested that this animal is the closest known relative of Eremoryzomys.
Eremoryzomys is now one of about 28 genera in the tribe Oryzomyini, which includes well over a hundred species distributed mainly in South America, including nearby islands such as the Galápagos Islands and some of the Antilles. Oryzomyini is one of several tribes recognized within the subfamily Sigmodontinae, which encompasses hundreds of species found across South America and into southern North America. Sigmodontinae itself is the largest subfamily of the family Cricetidae, other members of which include voles, lemmings, hamsters, and deermice, all mainly from Eurasia and North America.
## Description
Eremoryzomys polius is a large, long-tailed rice rat that in color resembles some North American woodrats (Neotoma). The fur is grayish above and lighter below, where the hairs are gray at the bases but white at the tips. The external ears (pinnae) are short and the tail is dark above and light below. The hindfeet have well-developed ungual tufts (patches of hair) along the plantar margins and between all of the digits, a character shared only with Sooretamys angouya among oryzomyines. The squamae, small structures resembling scales that cover the soles of the hindfeet in many oryzomyines, are well developed. The claw of the first digit extends nearly to the end of the first phalanx of the second toe and the claw of the fifth toe extends slightly beyond the first phalanx of the fourth toe. As in most oryzomyines, the female has eight mammae. Head and body length is 138 to 164 mm (5.4 to 6.5 in). In Osgood's original two specimens, an old female and an adult female, tail length is 188 and 180 mm (7.4 and 7.1 in), respectively; hindfoot length is 30 and 30 mm (1.2 and 1.2 in); and greatest skull length is 37 and 34.7 mm (1.46 and 1.37 in). E. polius has 12 thoracic, 7 or 8 lumbar, and 35 or 36 caudal vertebrae; the presence of 12 thoracic vertebrae is a putative synapomorphy of Oryzomyini.
### Skull
In the skull, the rostrum (front part) is long and robust. The nasal bones are short, not extending further back than the lacrimals, and the premaxillaries extend about as far back as the nasals. The zygomatic notch, an extension at the front of the zygomatic plate, is present. The plate's back margin is level with the front of the first upper molar. A strong jugal bone is present in the zygomatic arch (cheekbone), so that the maxillary and squamosal bones, which form the front and back parts of the arch, respectively, do not overlap when seen from the side. The narrowest part of the interorbital region (located between the eyes) is to the front and the region's margins exhibit strong beading. Various crests develop on the rounded braincase, especially in old animals. The parietal bones form part of the roof of the braincase and, unlike in some other rice rats, also extend to the sides of the braincase. The interparietal bone at the back of the braincase is narrow and wedge-shaped, so that the parietal and occipital bones meet extensively.
The incisive foramina are very long, extending well between the molars. The posterolateral palatal pits are well-developed and recessed into a fossa (depression). The bony palate is relatively short, with the mesopterygoid fossa extending forward to the end of the molar row or even between the third molars. The roof of the fossa is perforated by large sphenopalatine vacuities. Usually, an alisphenoid strut is present; this extension of the alisphenoid bone separates two foramina (openings) in the skull, the masticatory–buccinator foramen and the foramen ovale accessorium. The condition of various grooves and foramina of the skull indicates that the pattern of the arterial circulation of the head is derived. The subsquamosal fenestra, an opening at the back of the skull determined by the shape of the squamosal bone, is large and the mastoid bone is perforated by a fenestra (opening). The squamosal lacks a suspensory process that contacts the tegmen tympani, the roof of the tympanic cavity, a defining character of oryzomyines.
In the mandible, the mental foramen, an opening in the mandible just before the first molar, opens to the outside, not upwards as in a few other oryzomyines. The upper and lower masseteric ridges, which anchor some of the chewing muscles, usually join into a single crest at a point below the first molar and do not extend forward beyond the molar. There is no distinct capsular process of the lower incisor, a trait Eremoryzomys shares with only a few other oryzomyines.
### Molars
The molars are bunodont (with the cusps higher than the connecting crests) and brachydont (low-crowned). On the upper first and second molar, the outer and inner valleys between the cusps and crests do not interpenetrate. Many accessory crests are present, including the mesolophs and mesolophids. The anterocone and anteroconid, the front cusps on the upper and lower first molar, are not divided into smaller outer and inner cusps. Small accessory roots are absent from the molars, so that each of the three upper molars has two roots on the outer side and one on the inner side and each of the lower molars has one root at the front and one at the back.
## Distribution and status
As far as now known, Eremoryzomys polius is confined to a small area in central Peru, at an altitude of 760 to 2,100 m (2,490 to 6,890 ft), but the species may range more widely. It occurs in forest in the dry lowlands of the upper parts of the basin of the Marañón River, east of the main mountain range of the Andes. The biogeographical pattern indicated by the relationship between Eremoryzomys and the Brazilian Drymoreomys is unusual. While there are some similar cases of relationships between Andean and Atlantic Forest animals, these involve inhabitants of humid forests in the Andes; Eremoryzomys, in contrast, lives in an arid area. Because E. polius is so poorly known, the 2008 IUCN Red List assesses it as "Data Deficient". It is threatened by habitat destruction for cattle pasture and is not known from any protected areas.
|
9,513,661 |
Meteorological history of Hurricane Wilma
| 1,171,668,794 | null |
[
"Hurricane Wilma",
"Meteorological histories of individual tropical cyclones",
"Tropical cyclones in 2005"
] |
Hurricane Wilma was the most intense tropical cyclone in the Atlantic basin on record in terms of minimum barometric pressure, with an atmospheric pressure of 882 millibars (26.0 inHg). Wilma's destructive journey began in the second week of October 2005. A large area of disturbed weather developed across much of the Caribbean and gradually organized to the southeast of Jamaica. By late on October 15, the system was sufficiently organized for the National Hurricane Center to designate it as Tropical Depression Twenty-Four.
The depression drifted southwestward, and under favorable conditions, it strengthened into Tropical Storm Wilma on October 17. Initially, development was slow due to its large size, though convection steadily organized. From October 18, and through the following day, Wilma underwent explosive deepening over the open waters of the Caribbean; in a 30-hour period, the system's central atmospheric pressure dropped from 982 millibars (29.0 inHg) to the record-low value of 882 millibars (26.0 inHg), while the winds increased to 185 mph (298 km/h). At its peak intensity, the eye of Wilma was about 2.3 miles (3.7 km) in diameter, the smallest known eye in an Atlantic hurricane. After the inner eye dissipated due to an eyewall replacement cycle, Hurricane Wilma weakened to Category 4 status, and on October 21, it made landfall on Cozumel and on the Mexican mainland with winds of about 150 mph (240 km/h).
Wilma weakened over the Yucatán Peninsula, and reached the southern Gulf of Mexico before accelerating northeastward. Despite increasing amounts of vertical wind shear, the hurricane re-strengthened to hit Cape Romano, Florida, as a major hurricane. Wilma weakened as it quickly crossed the state, and entered the Atlantic Ocean near Jupiter, Florida. The hurricane again re-intensified before cold air and wind shear penetrated the inner core of convection. By October 26, it transitioned into an extratropical cyclone, and the next day, the remnants of Wilma were absorbed by another extratropical storm over Atlantic Canada.
## Formation
During the second week of October, an unusually large, monsoon-like lower-level circulation and a broad area of disturbed weather developed over much of the Caribbean Sea. The system was enhanced by diffluence from an upper-level low across the southwestern Atlantic. By October 13, a broad area of low pressure developed and persisted about 150 miles (240 km) southeast of Jamaica, possibly aided by the passage of tropical waves through the area at the time. Convection increased and became slightly better organized, though upper-level wind shear initially prevented development. The system drifted westward, and early on October 14 the convection became more concentrated and a little better organized as upper-level wind shear lessened slightly.
Later on October 14, the system became much better defined, with increasingly organized shower and thunderstorm activity, as conditions in the upper levels of the atmosphere became significantly more favorable. It was then that the National Hurricane Center first indicated that it was possible for a tropical depression to develop in the area. Dvorak classifications were initiated on October 15. The system continued to organize, with the National Hurricane Center remarking the system could ultimately become a hurricane. By late on October 15, the surface circulation became defined well enough, with sufficiently organized deep convection, for the National Hurricane Center to designate the system as Tropical Depression Twenty-Four while it was located about 220 miles (350 km) east-southeast of Grand Cayman.
The depression tracked slowly westward, a motion due to weak steering currents caused by a high-pressure area to its north across the Gulf of Mexico. Initially, the center of circulation was broad without a defined inner core; forecaster Lixion Avila remarked, "The area of minimum pressure could [have been] anywhere within 60 miles (97 km) of its [initial advisory position]." Initially, the tropical depression was forecast to drift west-southwestward before turning to the north; within five days of the forecast's issuance, the system was predicted to be located about 80 miles (130 km) south of the Isle of Youth as a 105 mph (169 km/h) hurricane. However, the National Hurricane Center noted in the first advisory on the depression that there were "all indications that there could a dangerous hurricane in the northwestern Caribbean Sea in 3 to 5 days." This was due to the depression being located within an environment very conducive for development, specifically low amounts of wind shear and very warm water temperatures.
As Tropical Depression Twenty-Four drifted southwestward, it steadily organized; by early on October 16, rainbands began to gradually consolidate with well-established outflow, and a large upper-level anticyclone developed over the depression. Although deep convection and banding features increased, mid-level dry air from the north prevented significant organization, and the convection was split into two primary areas. Surface buoy reports indicated that, due to its large size, the system failed to strengthen beyond tropical depression status, even though it received tropical storm strength Dvorak classifications from The National Hurricane Center's Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Satellite Analysis Branch. Continued reconnaissance flights reported peak winds of about 30 mph (48 km/h).
## Peak strength
By early on October 17, the outer rainbands, which had previously dominated the structure of the cyclone, dissipated, while deep convection developed near and to the south of the center. Computer models predicted steady strengthening as the depression tracked westward before turning to the north. Of the intensity models, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory predicted an intensity of 135 mph (217 km/h) within 36 hours, with other forecasts being more conservative in their predictions. Deep convection continued to develop to the south of the center, and the depression intensified into Tropical Storm Wilma at 0600 UTC on October 17, while located about 200 miles (320 km) southeast of Grand Cayman. Upon becoming a tropical storm, the National Hurricane Center predicted Wilma to track west-northwestward, reaching winds of 105 mph (169 km/h) before striking the northeastern portion of the Yucatán Peninsula.
The storm continued to the southwest while deep convection persisted near the center. National Hurricane Center forecaster James Franklin remarked, "Confidence at the later ranges [of the forecast track] was unusually low", due to wide divergences between computer models. Late on October 17, a hurricane hunters flight into Wilma recorded winds of 50 mph (80 km/h), but an unusually low pressure of 989 millibars (29.2 inHg), which would be more typical of a minimal hurricane. This was due to unusually low pressures across the region, which resulted in a lesser pressure gradient and thus lighter winds. Convection continued to develop near the center and became much more symmetrical.
Tropical Storm Wilma began to turn to the west-northwest on October 18, during which the storm developed a small, intermittent and ragged eye feature. It continued to intensify, and at 1200 UTC on October 18, Wilma attained hurricane status while located about 225 miles (362 km) south-southeast of Grand Cayman. Shortly after reaching hurricane strength, the hurricane began undergoing explosive deepening, after the development of a "pinhole" eye 9 miles (14 km) in diameter. This small eye was surrounded by a ring of deep convection, with cloud-top temperatures of about −125 °F (−87 °C).
Early on October 19, Wilma attained major hurricane status while continuing to rapidly intensify, and by 0600 UTC, the storm's maximum sustained winds increased to 165 mph (266 km/h), making Wilma a dangerous Category 5 storm on the Saffir–Simpson scale. In the span of just 24 hours, Wilma had intensified from a 70 mph (110 km/h) tropical storm to a 175 mph (282 km/h) Category 5 hurricane, an unprecedented event for an Atlantic hurricane. The eye continued to contract to a diameter of about 2 nautical miles (3.7 km), the smallest known eye in an Atlantic hurricane, and at 1200 UTC on October 19, Wilma attained peak winds of 185 mph (298 km/h). The central pressure rapidly dropped 54 millibars (1.6 inHg) from 0000 to 0600 UTC, and at 0800 UTC, a hurricane hunters flight recorded a minimum central pressure of 884 millibars (26.1 inHg) in a dropsonde near the center of the extremely small eye. As the dropsonde did not reach the calm winds in the center, the pressure was estimated at 882 millibars (26.0 inHg), the lowest pressure in an Atlantic hurricane on record. The pressure continued to fall as the hurricane hunters left the hurricane, and it is possible the pressure was slightly lower. Operationally, the peak intensity was estimated at 175 mph (282 km/h). It is estimated by Dr. Eric Uhlhorn of NOAA's Hurricane Research Division that the winds may have peaked at between 189 and 229 mph rounded to 190 and 230 mph respectively following that Hurricane Hunter mission. At the time of its peak intensity, hurricane-force winds extended only 50 miles (80 km) from the small center of Wilma, with tropical storm force winds extending only about 160 miles (260 km).
## First landfall
Shortly after peaking in intensity, the coldest cloud tops surrounding the eye warmed slightly and an outer eyewall began to develop, signifying an eyewall replacement cycle was occurring. By late on October 19, the winds in Hurricane Wilma decreased to 160 mph (260 km/h) as the inner 5-mile (8 km) wide eye weakened and the wind field expanded. Early on October 20 the hurricane weakened to Category 4 status after the small, inner eye dissipated and the 45-mile (72 km) wide outer eyewall became the dominant eye. At the time, the pressure measured 892 millibars (26.3 inHg), the second-lowest known pressure for a Category 4 hurricane (Super Typhoon Judy had an 887 mb pressure at peak intensity), and Wilma retained the large eyewall as it turned northwestward. Initially, the hurricane was forecast to re-intensify into a Category 5 hurricane, with one forecast predicting it to make landfall on the Yucatán Peninsula with winds of 165 mph (266 km/h), though Wilma remained a strong Category 4 hurricane as it tracked northwestward.
Steering currents remained weak, though a series of troughs eroded the high-pressure system across the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in a turn towards the north-northwest. Environmental conditions remained favorable, with the eye becoming more distinct early on October 21. At about 2145 UTC on October 21, Wilma made landfall on the island of Cozumel with winds of 150 mph (240 km/h). It weakened slightly as it continued northwestward, and struck the Mexican mainland near Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, at 0330 UTC on October 22, with winds of 135 mph (217 km/h) and gusts of up to 170 mph (270 km/h).
## Second landfall and demise
On October 22, the mid-level ridge to the north of Wilma essentially dissipated, leaving the hurricane drifting northward across the northeastern Yucatán Peninsula. As the hurricane moved further inland, the eye became cloud-filled as the deepest convection began to warm, and the winds gradually weakened during its passage over land. About 26 hours after making landfall on Cozumel, Wilma emerged into the southern Gulf of Mexico near Cabo Catoche with winds of about 100 mph (160 km/h). Upon reaching open waters, reconnaissance aircraft reported the remains of an inner eyewall and an outer eyewall oscillating between 70 and 90 miles (110 and 140 km) in diameter. Convection deepened around the eyewalls, and the inner core of convection, which had previously become disrupted over land, became slightly better defined.
A powerful eastward-moving mid-level trough across the central United States turned the hurricane northeastward and caused it to gradually accelerate. Vertical wind shear increased as strong upper-level southwesterly flow increased, though in spite of the shear Wilma continued to intensify. Early on October 24, Wilma attained major hurricane status while located about 120 miles (190 km) west-southwest of Key West, Florida. It gradually became better organized, with the large 50 miles (80 km) eye becoming very distinct on satellite and radar imagery. Wilma was able to retain its strength because large eyes in tropical cyclones are more stable and more resistant to vertical wind shear. Despite wind shear values of about 30 mph (48 km/h), Wilma strengthened further to reach winds of 125 mph (201 km/h). It weakened slightly as it approached Florida, and made landfall at Cape Romano with winds of 120 mph (190 km/h) at around 1030 UTC on October 24.
Hurricane Wilma crossed the Florida peninsula in about 4.5 hours while continuing to accelerate northeastward, and emerged into the Atlantic Ocean as a weakened 110 mph (180 km/h) hurricane near Jupiter. A vigorous cold front associated with the mid-level trough moved across the area to the west of Wilma, yet the cooler and drier air behind the front could not fully penetrate the inner core of the hurricane to weaken it. Shortly after exiting the Florida coastline, Wilma began to re-intensify, believed to be due to a reduction of friction of the eyewall and warm waters of the Gulf Stream. Early on October 25, the hurricane reached a secondary peak intensity of 125 mph (201 km/h) while located about 340 miles (550 km) east of Jacksonville, Florida. During the time, the large circulation of Wilma absorbed the much smaller Tropical Depression Alpha over the Bahamas.
Shortly after its secondary peak intensity, the wind shear, combined with its rapid forward motion of 50 mph (80 km/h), resulted in a steady weakening trend. The overall cloud pattern began to deteriorate, with the eye becoming less distinct and the convection less symmetric. By 1117 UTC on October 25, the center was located to the northwest of the primary convection as cold air from the southwest entrained the circulation. The remaining convection continued to diminish, and by late on October 25 Wilma transitioned into an extratropical cyclone while located about 230 miles (370 km) southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and still at Category 1 intensity. The weakening extratropical remnant turned to the east-northeast before being absorbed by another extratropical storm over Atlantic Canada on October 27.
## See also
- Meteorological history of Hurricane Katrina
- Effects of Hurricane Wilma in Florida
- Effects of Hurricane Wilma in the Bahamas
- List of Florida hurricanes
|
42,531,830 |
Thorpe affair
| 1,168,116,731 |
1970s British political and sex scandal
|
[
"1979 in British politics",
"1979 in LGBT history",
"Criminal trials that ended in acquittal",
"LGBT history in the United Kingdom",
"LGBT-related political scandals",
"Murder trials",
"Political sex scandals in the United Kingdom",
"Trials in London"
] |
The Thorpe affair of the 1970s was a British political and sex scandal that ended the career of Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal Party and Member of Parliament (MP) for North Devon. The scandal arose from allegations by Norman Josiffe (otherwise known as Norman Scott) that he and Thorpe had a homosexual relationship in the early 1960s, and that Thorpe had begun a badly planned conspiracy to murder Josiffe, who was threatening to expose their affair.
Thorpe, while admitting that the two had been friends, denied any such relationship. With the help of political colleagues and a compliant press, he was able to ensure that rumours of misconduct went unreported for more than a decade. Scott's allegations were a persistent threat, however, and by the mid-1970s he was regarded as a danger both to Thorpe and to the Liberal Party, which was then enjoying a resurgence of popularity and was close to a place in government. Attempts to buy or frighten Scott into silence were unsuccessful, and the problem deepened, until the fallout following the shooting of his dog during a possible murder attempt by a hired gunman in October 1975 brought the matter into the open. After further newspaper revelations, Thorpe was forced to resign the Liberal leadership in May 1976, and subsequent police investigations led to him being charged, with three others, with conspiracy to murder Scott. Before the case came to trial, Thorpe lost his parliamentary seat at the 1979 general election.
At the trial in May 1979, the prosecution's case depended heavily on the evidence of Scott, Thorpe's former parliamentary colleague Peter Bessell, and the hired gunman, Andrew Newton. None of these witnesses impressed the court. Bessell's credibility was undermined by the revelations of his financial arrangements with The Sunday Telegraph. In his summing-up the judge was scathing about the prosecution's evidence, and all four defendants were acquitted. Nevertheless, Thorpe's public reputation was damaged irreparably by the case. He had chosen not to testify at the trial, which left several matters unexplained amid public disquiet.
Thorpe's retirement into private life was followed by the onset of Parkinson's disease in the mid-1980s, and he made few public statements afterwards. He eventually achieved a reconciliation with the North Devon Liberal Democrat constituency party, of which he was honorary president from 1988 until his death in 2014. Allegations of suppression of evidence by the police before the trial were under investigation from 2015, culminating in June 2018 when the police said that there was no new evidence and the case would remain closed.
## Background
### Homosexuality and English law
Before the passage of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which decriminalised most homosexual acts in England and Wales (but did not apply to Scotland or Northern Ireland), all sexual activity between men was illegal throughout the United Kingdom, and carried heavy criminal penalties. Antony Grey, a secretary of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, wrote of "a hideous aura of criminality and degeneracy and abnormality surrounding the matter".
Political figures were particularly vulnerable to exposure; William Field, the Labour MP for Paddington North, was forced to resign his seat in 1953 after a conviction for soliciting in a public lavatory. In the following year Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, the youngest peer in the House of Lords, was imprisoned for a year after being convicted of "gross indecency", victim of a virulent "drive against male vice" led by the Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe.
Four years later public attitudes had changed little. When Ian Harvey, a junior Foreign Office minister in Harold Macmillan's government, was found guilty of indecent behaviour with a Coldstream Guardsman in November 1958, he lost both his ministerial job and his parliamentary seat at Harrow East. He was ostracised by the Conservative Party and by most of his former friends, and never again held a position in public life. Thus, anyone entering politics at that time knew that revelations of homosexual activity would likely bring such a career to a swift end.
### Thorpe
John Jeremy Thorpe was born in 1929, the son and grandson of Conservative MPs. He attended Eton, then studied law at Trinity College, Oxford, where, having decided on a political career, he devoted his main energies to making a personal impact rather than to his studies. Rejecting his Conservative background, he joined the small, centrist Liberal Party—which by the late 1940s was a declining force in British politics, but still offered a national platform and a challenge to an ambitious young politician. He became secretary and eventually President of the Oxford Liberal Club, and met many of the party's leading figures. In the Hilary term (January–March) of 1950–51 Thorpe served as President of the Oxford Union.
In 1952, while studying at the Inner Temple prior to his call to the bar, Thorpe was adopted as prospective Liberal parliamentary candidate for the North Devon constituency, a Conservative-held seat where, at the 1951 general election, the Liberals had finished in third place behind Labour. Thorpe worked in the constituency tirelessly, using the slogan "A Vote for the Liberals is a Vote for Freedom", and at the 1955 general election, had halved the sitting Conservative MP James Lindsay's majority. Four years later, in October 1959, he captured the seat with a majority of 362, one of six successful Liberals in what was generally an electoral triumph for the Conservative Macmillan government.
The writer and former MP Matthew Parris described Thorpe as one of the more dashing among the new MPs elected in 1959. Thorpe's chief political interest lay in the field of human rights, and his speeches criticising apartheid in South Africa attracted the attention of the South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS), who took note of this rising star in the Liberal Party. Thorpe was briefly considered as best man at the 1960 wedding of his Eton contemporary Antony Armstrong-Jones to Princess Margaret, but was rejected when vetting checks indicated that he might have homosexual tendencies. The security agency MI5, which routinely keeps records on all Members of Parliament, added this information to Thorpe's file.
### Josiffe, later named Scott
Norman Josiffe was born in Sidcup, Kent, on 12 February 1940—he did not assume the name Scott until 1967. His mother was Ena Josiffe, née Lynch; Albert Josiffe, her second husband, abandoned the family home soon after Norman's birth. Norman's early childhood was relatively happy and stable. After leaving school at 15 with no qualifications, he acquired a pony by means of an animal charity, and became a competent rider. When he was 16 he was prosecuted for the theft of a saddle and some pony feed, and was put on probation. With the encouragement of his probation officer he took lessons at Westerham Riding School at Oxted in Surrey, and eventually found work at a stable in Altrincham in Cheshire. After moving there he chose to cut all links with his family, and began to call himself "Lianche-Josiffe" ("Lianche" being a stylised version of "Lynch"). He also hinted at an aristocratic background, and of family tragedies that had left him orphaned and alone.
In 1959 Josiffe moved to the Kingham Stables in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, where he learned dressage while working as a groom. The stables were owned by Norman Vater, the self-made son of a coalminer who, like Josiffe, had inflated his name and was known as "Brecht Van de Vater". In the course of his rise, Vater had made numerous friends in higher social circles, among them Thorpe. Initially, Josiffe was settled and happy at the stables, but his relationship with Vater deteriorated in the face of the latter's assertive and demanding manner, and he was unable to form good relationships with his fellow-workers. He began to evidence the kind of behaviour which a journalist would later summarise as his "extraordinary talent for wheedling his way into people's sympathy before turning their lives to misery with his hysterical temper-tantrums."
### Bessell
Peter Bessell, eight years older than Thorpe, had a successful business career before entering Liberal politics in the 1950s. He came to the party leadership's attention in 1955 when, as the Liberal candidate in the Torquay by-election, he substantially increased his party's vote in the first of a series of impressive Liberal results during the 1955–59 parliament. He was subsequently selected as candidate for the more winnable constituency of Bodmin, and became both an admirer and personal friend of Thorpe, who in turn was impressed by Bessell's apparent business acumen. At Bodmin in the 1959 general election, Bessell reduced the Conservative majority, and he followed this in the October 1964 election with victory by over 3,000 votes. With the prestige of the letters "MP" after his name, Bessell set out in pursuit of serious money-making, while staying close to Thorpe whom he considered the likely next leader of the Liberal Party.
Bessell noted that Thorpe, for all his gregariousness and warmth, appeared to have no female friends and lacked any interest in women. The former Liberal MP Frank Owen confided to Bessell his suspicions that Thorpe was homosexual; other West Country Liberals had formed the same opinion. Aware that exposure as a gay man would end Thorpe's career, Bessell became his self-appointed protector, even to the extent, he later said, of falsely claiming to be bisexual, as a means of acquiring his friend's confidence.
### Holmes
David Holmes, one of four assistant treasurers of the Liberal Party appointed by Thorpe in 1965, had been best man at Thorpe's wedding and was completely loyal to him. He was godfather to Thorpe's son Rupert, born in 1969. Holmes took over the role of Thorpe's protector after Bessell moved to the United States in January 1974. When charged in 1978, he was described as David Malcolm Holmes (48), merchant banker, of Eaton Place, Belgravia. He died in 1990, leaving a substantial fortune.
## Origins
### Thorpe–Scott friendship
In late 1960 or early 1961, Thorpe visited Vater at the Kingham Stables, and briefly met Josiffe. He was sufficiently taken with the young man to suggest that, should Josiffe ever need help, he should call on him at the House of Commons. Soon after this, Josiffe left the stables after a serious disagreement with Vater. He then suffered a mental breakdown, and for much of 1961 was under psychiatric care. On 8 November 1961, a week after discharging himself from the Ashurst clinic in Oxford, Josiffe went to the House of Commons to see Thorpe. He was penniless, homeless and, worse, had left Vater's employment without the National Insurance card which, at that time, was essential for obtaining regular work and access to social and unemployment benefits. Thorpe promised he would help.
According to Josiffe's account, a homosexual liaison with Thorpe began that same evening, at the home of Thorpe's mother Ursula Thorpe (née Norton-Griffiths, 1903–1992) in Oxted and continued for several years. Thorpe, while acknowledging that a friendship developed, denied any sexual dimension in the relationship. Thorpe organised accommodation for Josiffe in London, and a longer-term stay with a family in Barnstaple, in the North Devon constituency. He paid for advertisements in Country Life magazine, in an effort to find work with horses for his friend, arranged various temporary jobs, and promised to help Josiffe to realise an ambition to study dressage in France. On the basis of Josiffe's claim that his father had died in an air crash, Thorpe's solicitors investigated whether any money was due, but found that Albert Josiffe was alive and well in Orpington.
When, early in 1962, the police questioned Josiffe about the alleged theft of a suede jacket, Thorpe persuaded the investigating officer that Josiffe was recovering from mental illness, and was under his care. No further action was taken. In April 1962 Josiffe obtained a replacement National Insurance card which, he later said, was retained by Thorpe who had assumed the role of his employer. This was denied by Thorpe, and the "missing card" remained an ongoing source of grievance for Josiffe. He began to feel marginalised by Thorpe, and in December 1962, in a fit of depression, confided to a friend his intention to shoot the MP and commit suicide. The friend alerted the police, to whom Josiffe gave a detailed statement of his sexual relations with Thorpe, and produced letters to support his story. None of this evidence impressed the police sufficiently for them to take action, although a report on the matter was added to Thorpe's MI5 file.
In 1963, a relatively calm period in Josiffe's life as a riding instructor in Northern Ireland ended after he was seriously hurt in an accident at the Dublin Horse Show. He moved back to England, and eventually found a job at a riding school in Wolverhampton, where he stayed for several months before his erratic behaviour proved too much, and he was asked to leave. After a period of aimlessness in London, Josiffe saw an advertisement for a groom's post in Porrentruy in Switzerland. Thorpe used his influence to secure him the job. Josiffe left for Switzerland in December 1964, but returned to England almost immediately with complaints that conditions were impossible. In his hurry to depart he left his suitcase behind, which contained letters and other documents that, he believed, supported his claims to a sexual relationship with Thorpe.
### Threats and counter-measures
Thorpe proved to be a lively and witty performer in the cut and thrust of parliamentary debates, and his presence in the House of Commons was soon noticed. In July 1962, in the wake of some disastrous Conservative by-election performances, Macmillan sacked seven cabinet ministers in what was known as the "Night of the Long Knives". Thorpe's comment—"Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for his life"—was widely regarded in the press as the most apt verdict on the prime minister. Thorpe raised his political profile with effective attacks on government bureaucracy, and in the October 1964 general election was returned in North Devon with an increased majority. A year later he secured the office of Liberal Party treasurer, a significant step towards his ambition to become the next party leader.
By early 1965 Josiffe was in Dublin, where he worked at various horse-related jobs while continuing to harass Thorpe by letter about his missing luggage and the continuing National Insurance card issue. Thorpe rejected any responsibility for these matters. In mid-March 1965 Josiffe wrote a long letter to Thorpe's mother, which began: "For the last five years, as you probably know, Jeremy and I have had a homosexual relationship." The letter blamed Thorpe for awakening "this vice that lies latent in every man", and accused him of callousness and disloyalty. Ursula Thorpe gave the letter to her son, who drafted a quasi-legal statement rejecting the "damaging and groundless accusations" and accusing Josiffe of attempting to blackmail him. The document was never sent; instead, Thorpe turned to Bessell for advice.
Bessell, anxious to be of service to his party's highest-profile figure, flew to Dublin in April 1965. He found that Josiffe was being advised by a sympathetic Jesuit priest, Father Sweetman, who believed that at least some of Josiffe's allegations might be true; otherwise, he asked Bessell, why had he flown all the way from London to deal with them? Bessell warned Josiffe of the consequences of attempting to blackmail a public figure, but in a more conciliatory vein promised to help recover the missing luggage and insurance card. He also hinted at the possibility of an equestrian job in America. Bessell's intervention appeared to contain the problem, particularly as Josiffe's suitcase was recovered shortly afterwards—although letters implicating Thorpe had been removed. For most of the following two years Josiffe remained largely quiescent in Ireland, attempting to establish himself in various careers; part of this time was spent in a monastery. It was during this period that he formally adopted the name of Scott.
In April 1967 Scott wrote to Bessell from Ireland, asking for help in obtaining a passport in his changed name so that he could begin a new life in America. A second, less positive letter, dated July, indicated that Scott had returned to England and was once again in difficulties, with medical bills and other debts. His lack of an insurance card prevented him from claiming benefits. By this time, Thorpe had succeeded Jo Grimond as leader of the Liberal Party. To resolve Scott's immediate problems, and to prevent a resumption of his tirades against the new party leader, Bessell began paying him a "retainer" of between £5 and £10 a week, ostensibly in lieu of lost national insurance benefits. Bessell also arranged Scott's new passport, but by this time Scott had abandoned his American plans and wished to establish a career as a model. He asked Bessell for £200 to set him up; Bessell refused, but in May 1968 gave him £75, on the understanding there would be no further demands for a year.
## Developments
### Incitement
Thorpe's leadership of the Liberals was not, initially, an unqualified success; his local campaigning skills did not readily transfer to set speeches on national or international issues, and some sections of the party became restless. His engagement to Caroline Allpass, announced in April 1968, reassured those in the party who had reservations about his private life; others were shocked by Thorpe's emphasis on the political motivation for the marriage—worth five points in the polls, he opined to Mike Steele, the party's press officer. For much of 1968 Thorpe was untroubled by Scott, who had acquired new friends and, according to Bessell, had burned his Thorpe letters. His reappearance in November 1968, again penniless and without prospect of work, was particularly unwelcome to Thorpe, as he fought to establish his leadership credentials. Bessell provided immediate relief by resuming the weekly cash retainer, but this was a short-term respite.
Early in December 1968 Bessell was summoned to Thorpe's office in the House of Commons. According to Bessell, Thorpe said of Scott: "We've got to get rid of him", and later: "It is no worse than shooting a sick dog." Bessell said later that he was unsure whether Thorpe was serious, but decided to play along, by discussing various ways of getting rid of Scott's body. Thorpe supposedly thought that disposal down one of Cornwall's many disused tin mines offered the best option, and also suggested his friend David Holmes as an appropriate assassin.
Bessell further maintained that in January 1969 Thorpe called him to a meeting together with Holmes, and that again Thorpe put forward suggestions for eliminating Scott. These were dismissed as impractical or ridiculous by Bessell and Holmes, who nevertheless agreed to give the matter further consideration. They hoped, said Bessell, that if they stalled, Thorpe would see the absurdity of his murder scheme and abandon it. Holmes, who largely confirmed Bessell's account of the meeting, later justified this decision on the grounds that "if we had simply said no, he might have gone elsewhere—and that might have led to an even greater disaster." According to Bessell and Holmes, discussions of the plan ended in May 1969, after the surprising news of Scott's wedding that month.
### Party enquiry
By early 1971, Thorpe's political career had stalled. He had led the party to a disastrous performance in the general election of June 1970; in an unexpected victory for the Conservatives under Edward Heath, the Liberals lost seven of their thirteen parliamentary seats, and Thorpe's majority in North Devon fell to below 400. Bessell, with mounting business worries, did not stand for re-election in Bodmin. Thorpe faced censure for his conduct of a campaign during which he had spent extravagantly and left the party on the verge of bankruptcy; but the matter was put aside in a wave of sympathy when his wife Caroline was killed in a road accident 11 days after the election. Thorpe was devastated; he continued as leader, but for the next year performed little beyond routine party duties.
Meanwhile, Bessell's efforts ensured that for the time being the Scott threat was kept at bay. The missing insurance card meant that Scott's wife, who was pregnant, could not claim maternity benefits. Scott threatened to talk to newspapers, but the matter was resolved by the issue of an emergency card after Bessell's intervention at the Department of Health and Social Security. In 1970 Scott's marriage collapsed; he blamed Thorpe, and again threatened exposure. Bessell successfully prevented Thorpe's name being mentioned in court during the divorce proceedings, and arranged that Thorpe would anonymously pay the legal costs. Early in 1971 Scott moved to a cottage in the village of Tal-y-bont in North Wales, where he befriended a widow, Gwen Parry-Jones. He sufficiently persuaded her of his mistreatment at the hands of Thorpe that she contacted the Liberal MP for the adjoining constituency of Montgomeryshire—Emlyn Hooson, on the right wing of the party and a friend of neither Thorpe nor Bessell. Hooson suggested a meeting at the House of Commons.
On 26 and 27 May 1971 Scott told his story to Hooson and David Steel, the Liberals' chief whip. Neither was fully convinced, but felt the matter warranted further investigation. Against Thorpe's wishes, a confidential party enquiry was arranged for 9 June, to be chaired by Lord Byers, the leader of the Liberals in the House of Lords. At the enquiry Byers took a tough line against Scott, failing to offer him a chair and treating him, Scott said, "like a boy at school up before the headmaster." Byers's unsympathetic manner quickly unsettled Scott, who changed the details of his story several times and frequently broke down in tears. Byers suggested that Scott was a common blackmailer who needed psychiatric help. Declaring that Byers was a "pontificating old sod", Scott fled the room. The enquiry then questioned police officers about letters which Scott had shown to the police in 1962, but were told that these were inconclusive. Thorpe persuaded the Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, John Waldron, to inform Byers that there was no police interest in Thorpe's activities, and no evidence of wrongdoing on his part. As a result, the enquiry dismissed Scott's allegations.
### Further threats
Angry at his treatment by the Byers inquiry, Scott sought other means of pursuing his vendetta against Thorpe. In June 1971 he met Gordon Winter, a South African journalist who was also an agent for the South African intelligence agency BOSS. Scott provided details of his supposed seduction by Thorpe, a story which Winter assured his BOSS masters would destroy Thorpe and the Liberal Party. He found that no newspaper would print the story on largely uncorroborated and unreliable evidence. In March 1972 Scott's friend Gwen Parry-Jones died; Scott used the inquest to denounce Thorpe for ruining his life and driving Parry-Jones to her death. None of these accusations were published. Depressed, Scott retreated into a state of torpor, assisted by tranquillisers, and for a while presented no threat to Thorpe.
In 1972 and 1973 Thorpe's political fortunes, and those of the Liberals, revived. Thorpe's personal standing was enhanced when, on 14 March 1973, he married Marion, Countess of Harewood, whose former husband was a first cousin to the Queen. After a series of by-election victories and local government gains, an electoral breakthrough for the party looked plausible when Heath called a general election in February 1974. In that election, with more than six million votes (19.3% of those cast), the Liberals achieved by far their best election result since the Second World War, but under the first-past-the-post voting system this large vote translated into only 14 seats. As neither major party won an overall majority, these seats gave Thorpe (whose personal majority in North Devon increased to 11,072) significant leverage. He was briefly in coalition discussions with Heath, who was prepared to give cabinet posts to Thorpe and other senior Liberals. Thorpe later denied that there was any serious prospect of agreement, and in March 1974 Harold Wilson formed a minority Labour government. In the second 1974 general election, in October, Wilson achieved a narrow majority; the Liberals lost ground, with 5.3 million votes and 13 MPs.
After Parry-Jones's death Scott lived quietly for a while in the West Country. In January 1974 he met Tim Keigwin, Thorpe's Conservative opponent in North Devon, and gave his version of his relationship with Thorpe. Keigwin was advised by the Conservative leadership that the material should not be used. Scott also confided in his doctor, Ronald Gleadle, who was treating him for depression. He had shown Gleadle his dossier of documents; the doctor, without Scott's knowledge or consent, sold the papers to Holmes, who had assumed the role of Thorpe's protector after Bessell settled permanently in California in January 1974. Holmes paid £2,500 for the documents, which were promptly burned in the home of Thorpe's solicitor. A further cache of papers was discovered in November 1974, by builders renovating a London office formerly used by Bessell. They found a briefcase containing letters and photographs that apparently compromised Thorpe, among them Scott's 1965 letter to Ursula Thorpe. Undecided what to do with their find, they took it to the Sunday Mirror newspaper. Sidney Jacobson, the paper's deputy chairman, decided not to publish the material and passed the briefcase and its content to Thorpe. Copies of the documents were kept in the newspaper's files.
### Alleged conspiracy
In their analysis of the case, the journalists Simon Freeman and Barry Penrose state that Thorpe probably formed the outline of a plan to silence Scott early in 1974, after the latter's re-emergence became a matter of increasing concern. Holmes later said that Thorpe was insistent that Scott be killed: "[Jeremy felt] he would never be safe with that man around". Uncertain how to proceed, late in 1974 Holmes approached a business acquaintance, a carpet salesman named John Le Mesurier (not to be confused with the actor of that name). Le Mesurier introduced Holmes to George Deakin, a fruit machine salesman who, he thought, would have contacts with people who might be prepared to deal with Scott. Holmes and Le Mesurier concocted a story involving a blackmailer who needed to be frightened off; Deakin agreed to help. In February 1975 Deakin met Andrew Newton, an airline pilot, who said he was willing to deal with Scott for an appropriate fee—between £5,000 and £10,000 was suggested. Deakin put Newton in touch with Holmes. Newton always said that he had been hired to kill, not frighten, citing the size of the fee that he was offered—too much, he said, simply to scare someone.
While these arrangements proceeded, Thorpe wrote to Sir Jack Hayward, the Bahamas-based millionaire businessman, who had given generously to the Liberal Party in the past. In the wake of the Liberals' February 1974 election successes, Thorpe asked for £50,000 to replenish the party's funds. He further requested that £10,000 of this sum be paid, not into the party's regular accounts but to Nadir Dinshaw, an acquaintance of Thorpe's who was resident in the Channel Islands. Thorpe explained that this subterfuge was necessary to deal with a special category of unspecific election expenses. Hayward trusted Thorpe, and sent the £10,000 to Dinshaw who, instructed by Thorpe, passed the money to Holmes. After the October 1974 election Thorpe again requested funds from Hayward, and again asked that £10,000 be sent via the Dinshaw route. Hayward obliged, though this time with more reluctance and after some delay. No accounting of this £20,000 was ever provided; Holmes, Le Mesurier and Deakin all said that it was used to finance a "conspiracy to frighten", although they disagreed as to how much was spent. Thorpe later changed the story he had given Hayward about special categories of election expenses, and said he had deposited the sum with accountants "as an iron reserve against any shortage of funds at any subsequent election." He denied that he had authorised any payment to Newton or to anyone else connected with the case.
### Shooting
Newton met Holmes early in October 1975 when, according to Newton, Holmes was given a down payment on a fee of £10,000. Holmes later denied any such transaction, admitting only an agreement that Newton would carry out a frightening operation. On 12 October Newton, calling himself "Peter Keene", drove to Barnstaple in a yellow Mazda car where he approached Scott, claiming to have been hired to protect Scott from a supposed Canadian hit man. This seemed plausible to Scott, who had been beaten up a few weeks earlier, and he agreed to meet "Keene" at a later date. He was sufficiently cautious to ask a friend to make a note of the stranger's car registration number.
On 24 October Newton, now driving a Ford saloon, met Scott by arrangement in Combe Martin, just north of Barnstaple. Newton explained that he had to drive to Porlock, about 25 miles away, and suggested that Scott accompany him—he and Scott could talk on the journey. Scott had with him his recently acquired pet dog, a Great Dane called Rinka; this disconcerted Newton, who was afraid of dogs, but Scott insisted that Rinka go with them. At Porlock, Newton left Scott and Rinka at a hotel while he supposedly dealt with his business. He picked them up shortly after 8 pm, and they began the drive back to Combe Martin. On a deserted stretch of road, Newton began to drive erratically, feigning tiredness, and accepted Scott's suggestion that he take over the driving. They stopped; Scott got out, followed by Rinka, and ran round to the driver's side, where he found Newton, gun in hand. Newton shot the dog in the head and, saying "It's your turn now", pointed the gun at Scott. The pistol failed to fire several times; eventually Newton jumped into the car and drove away, leaving Scott and the dead or dying dog by the roadside.
After Scott had been picked up in a distressed state by a passing car, the police were notified, and began enquiries. Newton was quickly identified through the Mazda's registration number, and arrested; his story was that Scott was blackmailing him and that the shooting had been intended to frighten him. He made no mention of any deal with Holmes, perhaps calculating that by keeping silent he would maximise his chances of payment from that quarter.
## Revelations
On 12 December 1975 Private Eye included another short teasing piece by Auberon Waugh which ended: "My only hope is that sorrow over his friend's dog will not cause Mr Thorpe's premature retirement from public life". By this time most newspapers knew of the stories surrounding Thorpe and Scott, but were wary of libel; according to Parris, by keeping silent they were "serving notice on Thorpe that they knew a bigger story must break, and could wait for it". In January 1976 Scott appeared before magistrates on a minor social security fraud charge, and stated that he was being hounded because of his previous sexual relationship with Thorpe. This claim, made in court and therefore protected from the libel laws, was widely reported.
The Daily Mail had meanwhile discovered Bessell's whereabouts in California, and on 3 February 1976 carried a long interview with the former MP. Bessell's claim that he had been blackmailed by Scott provided Thorpe with temporary cover. On 6 March newspapers reported Holmes's purchase of Scott's dossier from Gleadle, and a few days later David Steel discovered from Dinshaw, a personal friend, that £20,000 intended for the party had been diverted to Holmes and was unaccounted for. Steel told Thorpe that he should resign, but he refused. In an attempt to reassure his wavering parliamentary colleagues, on 14 March Thorpe made arrangements with The Sunday Times newspaper to publish a detailed rebuttal of Scott's charges, under the heading "The Lies of Norman Scott".
Newton's trial took place at Exeter Crown Court from 16 to 19 March 1976, where Scott repeated his allegations against Thorpe despite the efforts of the prosecution's lawyers to steer him away. Newton was found guilty of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment, but he did not incriminate Thorpe. Thorpe's difficulties increased when Bessell, fearing for his own position and perhaps scenting the possibility of making money, changed his stance and confessed in the Daily Mail on 6 May that he had lied to protect his former friend. A further concern for Thorpe was the danger that newspapers would publish letters he had sent to Scott early in their friendship. In an effort to forestall this, Thorpe arranged for the publication of two of the letters in The Sunday Times, a paper generally sympathetic towards him. In one of these letters Thorpe referred to Scott by the pet name "Bunnies". The tone of this letter convinced readers and commentators that Thorpe had not been frank about the nature of the relationship. On 10 May 1976 he resigned as Liberal leader amid rising criticism, again categorically denying Scott's allegations but acknowledging the damage that they were inflicting on the party.
After Thorpe's resignation the relative lack of press attention to the story for 18 months disguised the extent to which investigative reporting continued. Barry Penrose and Roger Courtiour, collectively known as "Pencourt", had originally been hired by Wilson after his retirement, to investigate the former prime minister's theory that Thorpe was a target of South African intelligence agencies. Pencourt's investigations led them to Bessell, who gave them his account of a conspiracy to murder Scott, and Thorpe's role in it. Before they could publish, they were scooped; Newton, released from prison in October 1977, sold his story to the London Evening News. He said that he had been paid £5,000 to kill Scott, and provided photographs of him receiving payment from Le Mesurier. A lengthy police inquiry followed, at the end of which Thorpe, Holmes, Le Mesurier and Deakin were charged with conspiracy to murder. Thorpe was additionally charged with incitement to murder, on the basis of his 1969 meetings with Bessell and Holmes. After being released on bail, Thorpe declared: "I am totally innocent of this charge and will vigorously challenge it".
On 2 August 1978 Thorpe participated in a House of Commons debate about the future of Rhodesia, but thereafter played no further active part in parliament, although he remained North Devon's member. At the Liberals' 1978 annual assembly in Southport, he embarrassed the leadership by making a theatrical entrance and taking his place on the platform.
## Committal and trial
The prosecution set out its case at the pre-trial committal hearing, which began in Minehead on 20 November 1978. At the request of Deakin's counsel, reporting restrictions were lifted, which meant that newspapers were free to print anything said in court without fear of the libel laws. This move infuriated Thorpe, who had hoped for an in camera hearing which would avoid unfortunate newspaper headlines and perhaps lead to the dismissal of the case. Whatever the outcome, Thorpe knew that the adverse publicity would destroy his career, and that Scott would thus have his revenge. As the hearings began, Bessell described the 1969 meetings where he alleged that Thorpe had suggested that Holmes should kill Scott, including the comment about the shooting of a sick dog. The court learned that Bessell had a contract with The Sunday Telegraph, which was paying him £50,000 for his story. Dinshaw gave evidence of the £20,000 he had received from Hayward and passed to Holmes, and of subsequent attempts by Thorpe to obscure the details of these transactions. Newton testified that Holmes had wanted Scott killed: "He would prefer it if [Scott] vanished from the face of the earth and was never seen again. It was left to me how to do it". Scott gave clinical details of his alleged seduction by Thorpe at Thorpe's mother's house in November 1961 and on other occasions, and also recounted his ordeal on the moors above Porlock Hill. Scott contended that homosexuality was an incurable disease, with which Thorpe had infected him, and that Thorpe therefore should be held responsible for Scott's lifelong care. At the end of the hearing the presiding magistrate committed the four defendants for trial at the Central Criminal Court, commonly known as the Old Bailey.
In March 1979 the Labour government fell on a vote of no confidence, and a general election was called for 3 May. This led to a brief delay in the start of the trial as Thorpe, who still had a following among North Devon Liberals, was adopted as their candidate in the election. Largely isolated from his party's national campaign, he lost the seat to Conservative Antony Speller by over 8,000 votes. Private Eye's Auberon Waugh, a West Country resident and close follower of the case, mocked Thorpe by standing in the North Devon constituency as a candidate for the "Dog Lovers' Party". His election address ended: "Rinka is NOT forgotten. Rinka lives. Woof, woof. Vote Waugh to give all dogs the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Thorpe obtained an injunction against the distribution of Waugh's election literature. Waugh received 79 votes, as against 31,811 for the winning Conservative and 23,338 for Thorpe.
The trial began on 8 May, under Sir Joseph Cantley, a relatively obscure High Court judge with limited experience of high-profile cases. To conduct his defence Thorpe engaged George Carman, who had established a criminal law practice on the Northern Circuit in Manchester; this was his first high-profile national case. Carman undermined Bessell's credibility by revealing his financial interest in Thorpe's conviction: his newspaper contract provided that in the event of acquittal, only half the £50,000 would be paid. In his 2016 account of the Thorpe affair, John Preston records that after observing Bessell's demeanour in court, the Sunday Telegraph cancelled its contract with him. The judge left no doubt as to his own low opinion of Bessell's character; Auberon Waugh, who was writing a book on the trial, thought that Cantley's general attitude to other prosecution witnesses became increasingly one-sided. On 7 June Deakin testified that although he had put Newton in touch with Holmes, he had thought that this was to help someone to deal with a blackmailer—he knew nothing of a conspiracy to kill. Deakin was the only defendant to testify; the others all chose to remain silent and call no witnesses, believing that, based on the testimonies of Bessell, Scott and Newton, the prosecution had failed to make its case. During his closing speech on behalf of Thorpe, Carman raised the possibility that Holmes and others might have organised a conspiracy without Thorpe's knowledge.
On 18 June the judge began his summing-up. He drew the jury's attention to the previous good character of the defendants, whom he characterised as "men of hitherto unblemished reputation." Cantley described Thorpe as "a national figure with a very distinguished public record". The judge was scathing about the principal witnesses: Bessell was a "humbug" whose contract with The Sunday Telegraph was "deplorable"; Scott was a fraud, a sponger, a whiner, a parasite—"but of course he could still be telling the truth. It is a question of belief." Newton was characterised as a perjurer and a chump, "determined to milk the case as hard as he can." The mystery surrounding the £20,000 that Thorpe had obtained from Hayward was dismissed as an irrelevance: "The fact that a man obtains money by deceit does not [prove] that the man was a member of a conspiracy." Waugh felt that the judge's lack of even-handedness could well provoke a counteraction against the accused from the jury. The summing-up became the subject of a scathing parody by the satirist Peter Cook.
## Acquittal and aftermath
The jury retired during the morning of 20 June. They returned just over two days later, and acquitted all four defendants on all charges. The judge awarded costs to Deakin, but not to Holmes or Le Mesurier whom he thought had been insufficiently co-operative in the enquiry. Thorpe made no application for costs. In a brief public statement, he said that he considered the verdict as "totally fair, just and a complete vindication." David Steel, on behalf of the Liberal Party, welcomed the verdict as "a great relief", and hoped that Thorpe would, "after a suitable period of rest and recuperation ... find many avenues where his great talents may be used." In North Devon Thorpe's acquittal was celebrated with a thanksgiving service at which the presiding vicar, The Rev. John Hornby, gave thanks to God "for the ministry of His servant Jeremy ...The darkness is now past and the true light shines. This is the day the Lord hath made! Now is the day of our salvation!"
Despite the acquittal, the broader public perception was strong that Thorpe had not behaved well, nor had he adequately explained himself. Ronald Herniman, the Archdeacon of Barnstaple, who was critical of Hornby's melodramatic thanksgiving service, wrote: "There is a great deal of unhappiness about the result at the Old Bailey. As far as most people are concerned, the trial ended with a big question mark over the case". Prevented by his party from a return to active politics, in 1982 Thorpe was appointed by Amnesty International as director of its British section, but after protests from the organisation's staff, he withdrew. Not long afterwards, Thorpe first showed signs of the Parkinson's disease that led to his almost complete withdrawal into private life in the mid-1980s. There was a political reconciliation when, in 1988, following the merger of the Liberals and the Social Democratic Party, the newly formed North Devon Liberal Democrat association made him their honorary president. When he attended the Liberal Democrat party conference in 1997 he received a standing ovation. In 1999, Thorpe published his political memoir, In My Own Time, in which he justified his silence at the trial, and stated that he had never doubted the outcome. Nine years later, in January 2008, Thorpe gave his first press interview in 25 years, to The Guardian. Referring to the affair he said: "If it happened now I think the public would be kinder. Back then they were very troubled by it ... It offended their set of values." Thorpe died on 4 December 2014.
After the trial Le Mesurier kept a low profile, after unsuccessful attempts to sell "the real story" to national newspapers. In June 1981, in a series of articles printed in the News of the World, Holmes reasserted his allegation that Thorpe had asked him to kill Scott: "The incitement charge which Jeremy faced was true, and if I had gone into the witness box I'd have had to tell the truth." Holmes, who died in 1990, had previously admitted his participation in a conspiracy to "frighten" Scott, though not to kill him. Bessell's account of the affair was published in America in 1980. He died in 1985; his final years were devoted to a campaign to stop the erosion of the San Diego beaches in California. Newton, like Le Mesurier, attempted to cash in on the case, but failed to find a newspaper willing to print his story. Scott's comments on the affair, immediately after the trial verdict, were that he was unsurprised by the outcome, but was upset by the aspersions on his character made by the judge from the safety of the bench. In December 2014, Scott, then aged 74, was reported to have recently relocated from Devon to Ireland, although John Preston, in his 2016 account, places him "in a village on Dartmoor ... with seventy hens, three horses, a cat, a parrot, a canary, and five dogs."
In a BBC investigative documentary broadcast in December 2014, an antique firearms collector named Dennis Meighan claimed that he had been hired by an unidentified senior Liberal to kill Scott, for a fee of £13,500. Having initially agreed, Meighan says, he changed his mind, but provided Newton with the gun used in the shooting. After confessing to the police, he was asked to sign a prepared statement which, according to him, "left everything out that was incriminating, but at the same time everything I said about the Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe, et cetera, was left out as well." The BBC's Tom Mangold said that Meighan's account, if true, indicated the existence of "a conspiracy at the very highest level". In 2016 the Avon and Somerset police passed their files to Gwent Police, for an independent review of the original investigation. After the police came to the conclusion that Andrew Newton had died, the Crown Prosecution Service closed the case. In 2018, Gwent Police reported that they had "now revisited these enquiries and have identified information which indicates that Newton may still be alive", therefore re-opening lines of inquiry. On 4 June 2018 the force announced that they had interviewed Newton, who had been living under a new name, Hann Redwin, in Dorking, Surrey, but that he had given no new useful information, and so the case would remain closed.
## In popular media
At the 1979 Secret Policeman's Ball, in aid of Amnesty International, the biased summing up speech by Mr Justice Cantley was parodied by Peter Cook. The sketch was written and delivered shortly after the trial, and was, according to Freeman and Penrose, "actually not that different from the original". The nine-minute opus, "Entirely a Matter for You", is considered to be one of the finest works of Cook's career. Cook and show producer Martin Lewis brought out an album on Virgin Records entitled Here Comes the Judge: Live of the live performance together with three studio tracks that further lampooned the Thorpe trial.
In 2016, approximately a year and a half after Thorpe's death, Viking Press published A Very English Scandal, a true crime non-fiction novel about the affair by journalist John Preston. In May 2018, BBC One broadcast a three-part television miniseries adaptation of the book, written by Russell T Davies, likewise titled A Very English Scandal, directed by Stephen Frears and starring Hugh Grant as Thorpe and Ben Whishaw as Scott.
|
71,498,766 |
1899 United States Senate election in Pennsylvania
| 1,145,920,007 |
None
|
[
"1899 Pennsylvania elections",
"1899 United States Senate elections",
"United States Senate elections in Pennsylvania"
] |
An election for the United States Senate was held by the Pennsylvania General Assembly beginning on January 17, 1899, to fill the seat then held by Matthew Quay for a six-year term beginning March 4, 1899. Quay was a candidate for re-election, but he was damaged by a pending indictment for involvement in financial irregularities with state money; his trial took place during the three months that the legislature attempted to resolve the Senate deadlock, and he was acquitted the day it adjourned, having failed to elect a senator. Quay was appointed to the Senate seat by the governor, but the Senate refused to seat him on the grounds that the governor lacked the constitutional authority to make the selection, and the seat remained vacant until the next meeting of the legislature, in 1901, when Quay was elected.
Quay was Pennsylvania's Republican political boss, and had served two terms in the Senate. Dissident Republicans and reformers were determined to defeat him for a third term, and sought to elect candidates in the 1898 elections for the legislature. Prominent among the anti-Quay forces was Philadelphia businessman John Wanamaker, who had been defeated for the Republican nominations for senator in 1897 and governor in 1898 through Quay's influence. Wanamaker made speeches against Quay during the 1898 campaign, though he refused to seek the Senate seat himself.
Although Republicans had an ample majority in the legislature, enough were opposed to Quay to deny the senator the majority he needed for re-election. Democrats and anti-Quay Republicans refused to join together to elect another candidate, though they had a majority between them. Democrats supported their 1898 gubernatorial candidate, George A. Jenks, while the dissident Republicans voted for several candidates before settling on Benjamin F. Jones. The legislature voted once a day during the session of over three months; no compromise was reached, and the session ended on April 20 without the election of a senator.
After the session and Quay's acquittal, Governor William A. Stone appointed Quay to the vacancy, but the U.S. Senate refused to seat him by one vote, and the senatorship remained vacant until 1901. Quay blamed his fellow Republican political boss, Mark Hanna of Ohio, for the defeat in the Senate, and gained revenge at the 1900 Republican National Convention by supporting Thomas C. Platt's scheme to politically sideline Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York by making him vice president, over Hanna's strong objection. After Quay's return to the Senate in 1901, he served there until his death in 1904, when control of Quay's political machine passed to his fellow Pennsylvania senator, Boies Penrose.
## Background
In drafting the Constitution, the members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 agreed that United States Senators would be chosen by state legislatures, not by the people. Federal law prescribed that the senatorial election was to take place beginning on the second Tuesday after the two houses of the legislature which would be in office when the senatorial term expired, convened and chose legislative officers. On the designated day, balloting for senator would take place in each of the two chambers of the legislature. If a majority of each house voted for the same candidate, then at the joint assembly held the following day at noon, the candidate would be declared elected. Otherwise, there would be a roll-call vote of all legislators, with a majority of those present needed to elect. In the event that no senator was elected, the legislature was required to hold at least one vote in joint assembly each day until it ended the session or a senator was elected. If a vacancy occurred when the legislature was not in session, the governor could make a temporary appointment to serve until lawmakers convened. This system was prone to deadlock if legislators could not agree. In the 1890s and 1900s, eight states failed to fill Senate seats for periods ranging from 10 months to four years; from 1901 to 1903, Delaware went unrepresented in the Senate.
Matthew Quay was born September 30, 1833, in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania. After completing his education, he became a lawyer in 1854, practicing in Beaver, Pennsylvania, and became prothonotary of Beaver County in 1856. He served as an officer in the Union Army, and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions at the 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg. Quay was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, taking office in 1865, and became part of the political machine of U.S. Senator Simon Cameron. Beginning in 1872, Quay served as Cameron's lieutenant. By the mid-1880s, Quay had seized control of the state Republican Party from Cameron's son, Senator Don Cameron, and in 1887 was himself elected to the Senate, with re-election in 1893. Money and patronage were Quay's weapons in gaining and maintaining power; he freely raided the state treasury, dispensing loans to those he favored and using state money to buy votes or the opinions of newspapers. He recognized the importance of this resource, himself serving as Pennsylvania State Treasurer from 1885 to 1887, and once said, "I don't mind losing the governorship or a legislature now and then, but I always need the state treasuryship."
## Opposition to Quay and indictment
There had, since 1882, always been some opposition to Quay within the Pennsylvania Republican Party, but it had always been beaten. Pennsylvania's senior senator, Don Cameron, announced he would retire at the end of his term in 1897. Philadelphia businessman and former United States Postmaster General John Wanamaker wanted the seat, which would be filled by the General Assembly in early 1897. Since most Republican legislators were beholden to Quay, his choice of nominee was usually accepted by the Republican legislative caucus, and Quay supported Boies Penrose. Wanamaker entered the race anyway, making speeches demonizing Quay, and making alliances with reformers in the legislature. Nevertheless, Penrose easily won the vote in the Republican legislative caucus in early 1897, and was elected. Wanamaker continued his anti-Quay campaigning through his effort to gain the Republican nomination for governor in early 1898, and even though he failed, continued to give speeches against the senator, hoping to generate enough opposition to prevent his re-election by the legislature in early 1899. His speeches brought the issue of bossism home to the voters of Pennsylvania, and helped elect Democrats or anti-Quay Republicans.
On October 3, 1898, Quay was arrested for conspiracy to defraud the People's Bank of Philadelphia. Quay had arranged in 1896 for \$1,000,000 of state funds () to be deposited in it and had persuaded John S. Hopkins, cashier and manager of the bank, that the funds be invested in the Metropolitan Traction Company of New York, sending a telegram: "If you buy and carry a thousand Met for me I will shake the plum tree", believed by investigators to mean that funds from the state treasury would be used to cover the speculation. The stock collapsed, the bank failed, and Hopkins fatally shot himself. It was alleged that the bank was paying the interest on state funds not to the state treasury, but to Quay. The information had been available for months; according to Quay biographer James Kehl, the indictment was timed to have had the greatest effect on the upcoming elections. In spite of the allegations, Quay's hand-picked gubernatorial candidate, William A. Stone, was victorious by over 110,000 votes.
Also indicted was Quay's son Richard and state treasurer Benjamin Haywood, though Richard Quay's indictment was withdrawn and Haywood would die before the verdict. The anti-Quay political forces did their best to capitalize on the claims of corruption against Quay and his associates, attempting to deny him re-election while appearing to remain loyal Republicans in the public eye. The trial was repeatedly delayed in late 1898, leading Quay to appeal to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to get a judge assigned, wanting the matter disposed of before the legislative balloting for Senate began in January. Instead a trial was set for late February.
## Caucus and early balloting
The legislature that was to convene in January 1899 consisted of 164 Republicans, 84 Democrats and 6 Fusionists, the last being elected across party lines by an anti-Quay coalition. On January 3, 1899, the Republican legislators convened in caucus to choose a candidate for senator. Under the conventions of the time, anyone who attended would be bound by the outcome, and only 109 Republicans showed up, of whom 98 voted for Quay, an outcome which was made unanimous. Since there were 254 legislators in full, Quay needed 128 votes in the joint assembly to be elected, and even if the dissenting attendees could be counted in, he was 19 votes short of election. Nevertheless, his supporters cited the outcome as a triumph, and predicted the senator would easily pick up the remaining necessary votes. The Democrats refused to join with the dissident Republicans to elect a senator, but decided on former congressman George A. Jenks, who had been their nominee for governor the previous year, as their candidate for Senate, while the Republicans who refused to support Quay initially had no single candidate, as Wanamaker had refused to run. Confident of re-election, Quay made \$40,000 () available to bribe wavering legislators into supporting him.
The initial voting in the two houses of the legislature took place in the state capital of Harrisburg on January 17. Quay received 27 votes in the Senate and 85 in the House, for a total of 112. Since there were a number of absentees and vacancies, 124 votes would be needed for election in the joint assembly, which put Quay 12 votes short. The Democratic candidate, Jenks, received 12 votes in the Senate and 70 in the House, and the leading other contender was John Dalzell, a Republican congressman from Pittsburgh, with 16 votes. This gave Quay a majority in the Senate but not in the House, necessitating balloting in joint assembly.
By the rules of the joint assembly, there was to be one vote each day unless legislators decided otherwise. Quay received a plurality on almost each vote, and sometimes a majority, but only on days a quorum was not present. Congressman Joseph C. Sibley, a Democrat, was working for Quay and urged the Pennsylvania Democratic legislators to vote for Quay. Instead, the Democrats continued to support Jenks. On February 27, the prosecution in the criminal case against Quay asked for more time; the matter was postponed until April as the senator's supporters claimed the case had collapsed. On March 3, angered when John R. Farr, Speaker of the state House of Representatives, adjourned that body in a manner the Democrats and dissident Republicans considered arbitrary, they remained on the floor and announced they would elect their own Speaker, but they did not have enough for a quorum, and after the effort was denounced by a former Democratic Speaker, it collapsed. That night, Quay's term in the Senate expired, and the seat became vacant; only Penrose represented Pennsylvania in the upper house.
## Later voting and deadlock
On March 15, The New York Times reported that the deadlock was likely to persist to the end of the session, and that the Pennsylvania Senate seat would likely go unfilled when Congress next convened in December, even by a gubernatorial appointee, as the Senate had usually rejected attempts to fill a seat by appointment when a state legislature had failed to choose. The balloting continued, once per day excepting Sundays, with Quay never getting close to a majority with a quorum. The anti-Quay Republicans offered to meet with his supporters, but Quay's manager, state senator John C. Grady, was slow to accept, and it was clear the Quay Republicans would rather have deadlock than find a compromise candidate. This was along the lines that Quay urged in a letter to his supporters, "To temporize with those persons who for three months have prevented the election of a Senator in Pennsylvania would extricate them from the abyss into which they have plunged. Instead of making their treason to the party odious, their treason would be made respectable, and treason made respectable would become fashionable." The Democrats refused to reach across the aisle to the anti-Quay Republicans to elect a compromise candidate, remaining loyal to Jenks.
According to historian James A. Kehl:
> The deliberations of the legislature tried men's patience and tired their minds. To those directly involved, the frantic efforts to make successful combinations or convert individual legislators turned the protracted struggle into a reign of terror—physically, mentally and morally. The tension was heightened by Quay's success in having his case brought to trial in Philadelphia ... The prosecution obviously had a weak case that had been patched together primarily to discredit Quay in political circles. He may have been guilty, but [Philadelphia district attorney Peter F.] Rothermel had neither the documents nor the witnesses to prove it.
On April 17, Quay lost some support when Pittsburgh political boss and state senator Christopher Magee informed the Quay caucus he would no longer support the ex-senator. Magee and others attended a meeting of perhaps 15 to 20 legislators the following morning in the state senate's chamber. At the meeting they passed a resolution stating that Quay could not be elected, and Magee nominated Benjamin F. Jones, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, for senator. When the joint assembly convened, Jones received 69 votes to 85 for Jenks and 93 for Quay. It had been speculated that Magee could take at least 20 votes with him, but in the end only 14 legislators defected. The final vote, on April 19, saw the same tally as the day before. On the final ballot, four legislators were paired and state senator Alexander L. Hawkins was absent, as he was serving with his regiment in the Philippines. The dissidents had hoped the Democrats would join with them to elect Jones, but they refused. The following day, the legislature formally adjourned, leaving the Senate seat empty, and in a Philadelphia courtroom, Quay was acquitted of the charges. To commemorate the acquittal, many Quay supporters planted plum trees; one in Gettysburg planted 50 and invited Quay to visit in a few years and shake all of them.
## Appointment
On April 21, Governor Stone appointed Quay to fill the vacancy in the Senate. There had been speculation he might do that, or call a special session of the legislature; he had refused to announce his plans. Stone stated that he believed Quay's trial had been political persecution, and wanted to raise the issue now rather than later. There was much discussion as to whether the Senate would seat Quay, given that the legislature had had the opportunity to fill the seat but had not done so. In a similar 1893 case involving a Montana Senate seat, it had refused to seat the appointee. According to Kehl, Stone would have been better advised to recall the legislature into special session in the hope the acquittal would cause them to reach a decision, but the governor wanted to rebuke Wanamaker and endorse Quay. Wanamaker mounted a campaign to get the Senate to refuse to seat Quay when the new congressional session began in December 1899. In this, he was joined by some newspapers who warned Republican senators to avoid giving the Democrats ammunition for the 1900 elections by having the Republican Senate accept someone rejected by his own state legislature.
When Congress convened on December 4, 1899, Quay's credentials were referred to the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections, as was a petition signed by 78 members of the Pennsylvania legislature, urging the Senate not to seat Quay. On January 4, 1900, George Hoar of Massachusetts, a Republican member of the committee, told the Senate that he was daily receiving many letters urging him to oppose Quay's seating, in common, he believed, with other members of the Senate.
On January 23, 1900, the committee reported back, and recommended that Quay not be seated, by a 5–4 vote, with Hoar voting in the minority. It held that governors lacked the constitutional authority to make appointments when legislatures deadlocked, and that governors could only appoint when a vacancy began during the recess of the legislature. One Republican joined four Democrats to produce the majority, with the remaining four Republicans in the minority.
Quay's seating was debated intermittently over the following three months by the Senate, which at last voted on April 24, 1900. Wanamaker got former president Benjamin Harrison, who had appointed him postmaster general, to use his influence to defeat Quay. Harrison convinced Republican senators from his home state, Indiana, as well as those former members of his administration who were in the Senate, to vote against seating Quay. The Senate refused to seat Quay by a vote of 33–32 in a vote that cut across party lines, with the Republicans against Quay including his fellow political boss, Ohio's Mark Hanna. Hanna, in addition to being a senator, was President William McKinley's closest advisor, and had run his 1896 campaign for the presidency.
Quay would avenge himself on Hanna by assisting New York's Thomas C. Platt at the 1900 Republican National Convention. Platt wanted to politically sideline his state's governor, Theodore Roosevelt, by making him vice president. Despite Hanna's strong opposition, Platt and Quay got the nomination for Roosevelt. According to historian Lewis L. Gould, while Quay desired to gratify his old friend and co-worker, Platt, it was "more especially to embarrass and defeat if possible the wishes of Senator Hanna, who had opposed his being seated in the Senate of the United States upon the certificate of the Governor of Pennsylvania". As Hanna's biographer, William H. Horner, put it, "[Early Hanna biographer Herbert] Croly observed that if not for Platt's desire to get Roosevelt out of New York and Quay's desire to get his revenge upon Hanna, Roosevelt would never have been vice president," an office from which he succeeded to the presidency with the assassination of President McKinley in September 1901.
## Aftermath
The fact that he was instrumental in the nomination of Roosevelt, seen as a war hero and reformer, boosted Quay, according to Kehl, "rebuild[ing] his tarnished image in the Keystone State". Quay spent the 1900 campaign season giving speeches for legislative candidates who would vote for his election when the legislature convened again in 1901. The results, though, favored Wanamaker's reformers. When the legislature convened, Quay was able to secure, possibly through bribery, the votes of one Democrat and seven Republicans previously pledged against him to gain a slim majority. Quay was elected for the remainder of the six-year term.
The election of Quay dispirited Wanamaker, who lost interest in politics. Nevertheless, according to the businessman's biographer, Herbert Adams Gibbons, Quay's prestige "was irretrievably lost. The mantle of Republican boss soon passed to the shoulders of Penrose." Quay died in 1904, still in office; Penrose controlled the state Republican Party until his own death in 1921 put an end to the Cameron-Quay-Penrose machine, one of the longest-lived and most powerful in the nation. Public dismay at what was seen as a corrupt means of choosing federal lawmakers, and one that sometimes led to deadlock, was a major factor in the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1913, which took responsibility for electing senators from state legislators, and gave it to the people.
|
69,308,816 |
1992–93 Gillingham F.C. season
| 1,154,378,246 | null |
[
"1992–93 Football League Third Division by team",
"Gillingham F.C. seasons"
] |
During the 1992–93 English football season, Gillingham F.C. competed in the Football League Third Division, the fourth tier of the English football league system. It was the 61st season in which Gillingham competed in the Football League, and the 43rd since the club was voted back into the league in 1950. By October, the team were close to the bottom of the Third Division and Damien Richardson was dismissed from his job as the club's manager. Glenn Roeder was appointed as his replacement in a player-manager capacity. The team's performances remained poor and, with two games remaining, Gillingham still faced the possibility of finishing bottom of the league table and being relegated out of the Football League. Victory over Halifax Town in the penultimate match of the season, however, ensured that Gillingham would compete in the Third Division again in the following season. Roeder resigned as manager following the conclusion of the season after less than nine months in charge.
Gillingham also competed in three knock-out competitions. The team reached the third round of the FA Cup and the second round of the Football League Cup but failed to progress beyond the initial group stage of the Football League Trophy. The team played a total of 53 competitive matches, winning 13, drawing 17, and losing 23. David Crown was the team's top goalscorer, with five goals in the Football League and a total of nine in all competitions, the lowest figure with which a player had finished a season as Gillingham's top scorer since the 1930s. Tony Butler made the most appearances, playing in 50 of the team's 53 competitive matches. The highest attendance recorded at the club's home ground, Priestfield Stadium, was 7,488, for a game against Southampton of the FA Premier League in the second round of the Football League Cup.
## Background and pre-season
The 1992–93 season was Gillingham's 61st season playing in the Football League and the 43rd since the club was elected back into the League in 1950 after being voted out in 1938. It was the club's fourth consecutive season in the fourth tier of the English football league system. Following the 1991–92 season, the teams in the Football League First Division, the highest level of the sport in England, broke away to form the new FA Premier League. As a result, the Football League was reduced from four divisions to three, placing Gillingham in the new Third Division rather than the old Fourth Division. Gillingham had finished 11th in the 22-team division in the 1991–92 season.
At the start of the season, Damien Richardson was the club's manager, a post he had held since April 1989. His assistant manager was Ron Hillyard, a fellow former Gillingham player. Paul Clark served as the team's captain. The management team signed five new players prior to the first game of the season. Gary Breen, a teenaged defender, and Liburd Henry, a forward, joined from Gillingham's Kent rivals, Maidstone United, also of the Third Division. Maidstone were experiencing severe financial difficulties and almost all their players left after the 1991–92 season; after being unable to fulfil their first game of the new season, they resigned from the Football League. Veteran forward Trevor Aylott joined Gillingham from Birmingham City and Scott Barrett, a goalkeeper, arrived from Colchester United. Richard Green, who had spent part of the previous season on loan to Gillingham from Swindon Town, re-joined the club on a permanent contract. Several players left the club, including previous captain Alan Walker. Forward Peter Beadle joined Tottenham Hotspur of the Premier League for a transfer fee of , a new record for the highest fee received by Gillingham for a player.
The team prepared for the new season with a number of friendly matches, one of which was a testimonial match for Bill "Buster" Collins, who had been with the club in a variety of roles since the early 1960s, including a long spell as youth team manager. Manchester United player Steve Bruce, who had started his professional career at Gillingham and credited Collins as a major influence, brought a team from his club to play against Gillingham in a match which drew a crowd of over 8,000 spectators. The club adopted a new kit design, adding white shoulder panels to the usual blue shirts; the second-choice kit, to be worn in the event of a clash of colours with the opposition, featured black and white stripes, the first-choice colours worn when the club was formed in 1893. Previewing the division, Keith Blackmore of The Times wrote that Gillingham were not among the bookmakers' favourites for promotion but nonetheless had a good chance, noting in particular the new signings from Maidstone and the fact that "no team containing [David] Crown and [Steve] Lovell is likely to go short of goals".
## Third Division
### August–December
Gillingham's first match of the season was at their home ground, Priestfield Stadium, against Northampton Town; Lawrence Osborne gave Gillingham the lead in his only appearance of the season and indeed his final appearance for the club, but they ultimately lost 3–2. The team also lost the next game, away to Bury; goalkeeper Barrett was sent off, the first of three occasions during the season when he would be dismissed. Gillingham recorded their first league win of the season at the fourth attempt, beating Wrexham 4–1 on 1 September. Lovell scored the team's only hat-trick of the season in the win, which would prove to be Gillingham's only victory in the first thirteen Third Division games of the season. The team drew their next three games, leaving them 14th in the 22-team league table, but then lost six consecutive league matches.
Defeat at home to Crewe Alexandra on 3 October left Gillingham 21st in the table, one place off the bottom of the entire Football League. Five days later, both Richardson and Hillyard were dismissed from their jobs by the club's board of directors. It meant the end of an 18-year association with the club for Hillyard, who had joined Gillingham as a player in 1974 before becoming assistant manager in 1989. Richardson attributed the team's poor performance to a combination of players' inexperience and the tactics he had employed, saying "I've lost my job on a matter of principle – teaching kids to play attractive football [...] I had to sell all the best players to get money in as the board wanted the kids to be pushed". Paul Clark, the captain, served as caretaker manager until 26 October, when Glenn Roeder was appointed as the club's new player-manager. The former Queens Park Rangers and Newcastle United defender had left third-tier Leyton Orient earlier in the year and was playing non-League football for Purfleet at the time of his appointment. His first game in charge resulted in a defeat at home to Torquay United. That game was the final Gillingham appearance for veteran forward Lovell, who had been with the club since 1987; as he did not feature in Roeder's plans he was sent out on loan to AFC Bournemouth for a short spell before leaving Gillingham altogether in December.
Gillingham won a league game for the first time in more than two months on 3 November, defeating Hereford United, and two games later beat Darlington by the same score, but had by then fallen to the bottom of the table. The team's first two Third Division matches of December resulted in defeats to Shrewsbury Town and Colchester United; the latter game took place only two days after Gillingham had defeated the same opponents in the FA Cup. Gillingham had originally been scheduled to play Maidstone on Boxing Day, but due to the latter team's withdrawal from the League, Gillingham instead re-arranged a game against Bury which had previously been scheduled for late January. Gillingham lost 4–1 in a match in which their opponents wore Gillingham's second-choice kit in the second half after the referee decided that the two teams' colours were too similar. The team's final game of 1992 was away to Scunthorpe United and ended in a 2–2 draw; Roeder selected himself in the starting line-up for the first time and, having turned 37 two weeks earlier, became the oldest player to make his debut for Gillingham. The year ended with Gillingham bottom of the Third Division.
### January–May
Gillingham's first league game of 1993 was at home to Rochdale and resulted in a 4–2 victory for the home team, lifting them off the bottom of the table. Forward Paul Baker, signed from Motherwell days earlier, scored on his debut; he would start every game for the remainder of the season. After that victory, however, Gillingham won only one of the next ten league games. Scottish forward Paul Ritchie, signed on loan from Dundee, made his debut on 6 February against Northampton and scored Gillingham's first goal in a 2–2 draw; seven days later he scored twice as the team defeated Scarborough, only their second victory of 1993. Fellow forward Crown, who had played intermittently in the first half of the season but not made any appearances since mid-December, came on as a substitute against Doncaster Rovers in the last game of February and scored an equalising goal in the final minute. Gillingham ended the month one point off the bottom of the league table.
Gillingham began March with two defeats, including a 2–0 loss away to Barnet in which both goals were own goals scored by Gillingham players. Gillingham defeated Carlisle United on 13 March, their first win for seven games; the victory took them up to 19th in the table. Two games later, the team achieved another victory, beating Lincoln City; Nicky Forster scored twice in a 3–1 win. Having not started a match since before Christmas, Forster had returned to the team in the win over Carlisle and would remain Baker's forward partner for the rest of the season. The first game of April resulted in a 4–1 defeat at home to York City, only the second time the team had conceded four goals in a game during the season, but Gillingham then beat Shrewsbury Town, who were sixth in the table and challenging for a place in the play-offs for promotion.
A 3–0 defeat to Colchester on 16 April meant that with two games remaining, Gillingham were 20th in the Third Division and could still finish bottom, which would result in them being relegated out of the Football League. The remaining games were against Halifax Town and Torquay, the two teams below Gillingham in the table. On 1 May, Gillingham defeated Halifax 2–0 at Priestfield with goals from Tony Eeles and Baker; the result meant that Gillingham could no longer finish below their opponents and were therefore safe from relegation. The game drew a crowd of 7,151, the largest attendance of the season for a league match at Priestfield by a margin of more than 3,000. After the match, Roeder commented to the press that it had been the most important game in Gillingham's history, saying "All the emotion you can imagine. It was a Cup tie, wasn't it?" Gillingham lost to Torquay in the final match of the season and finished 21st, one place above Halifax, who lost their place in the Football League. The defeat meant that, for the first time in the club's history, Gillingham had gone through an entire season without winning a league game away from home. Reviewing the season for the magazine When Saturday Comes ten years later, Chris Lynham characterised the team as poor in all areas, picking out Aylott's unsatisfactory performance as a replacement for Beadle up front and the regularity with which the defence conceded goals in injury time. Contrary to Blackmore's prediction prior to the season, only four teams in the Third Division scored fewer goals than Gillingham.
### Match details
Key
- In result column, Gillingham's score shown first
- H = Home match
- A = Away match
- pen. = Penalty kick
- o.g. = Own goal
Results
### Partial league table
## Cup matches
### FA Cup
As a Third Division team, Gillingham entered the 1992–93 FA Cup in the first round and were paired with Kettering Town of the Football Conference, the fifth tier of English football, who had entered the competition in the fourth and final qualifying round. Kettering took the lead in the first half before Gillingham scored twice. Despite being forced to substitute their goalkeeper due to an injury before half-time, with former Gillingham midfielder Ian Docker taking over in goal, the Conference team levelled the scores in the second half and nearly held on for a draw. Forster scored a winner in the 85th minute, however, meaning that Gillingham progressed past the first round of the FA Cup for the first time in five seasons. In the second round their opponents were fellow Third Division team Colchester United. The initial match, at Priestfield, resulted in a 1–1 draw, necessitating a replay at Layer Road in Colchester. Gillingham won the replay 3–2 with goals from Forster, Andy Arnott and Henry. The Premier League and First Division teams entered the competition in the third round, but Gillingham were paired with Huddersfield Town of the Second Division. The initial match at Priestfield ended in a goalless draw, meaning another replay. Gillingham lost 2–1 in the replay at Leeds Road and were eliminated from the competition.
#### Match details
Key
- In result column, Gillingham's score shown first
- H = Home match
- A = Away match
- pen. = Penalty kick
- o.g. = Own goal
Results
### Football League Cup
As a Third Division team, Gillingham entered the 1992–93 Football League Cup in the first round and were paired with Northampton Town; the first leg of the two-legged tie took place only three days after Gillingham had played Northampton in the first league match of the season. Gillingham won both legs, 2–0 at home and 2–1 away, and thus won the tie 4–1 on aggregate. In the second round, they played Southampton of the Premier League. The first leg took place at Priestfield and drew a crowd of 7,488, the largest attendance recorded at the stadium during the season. Despite playing a team from three levels higher, Gillingham achieved a 0–0 draw. In the second leg at The Dell, however, the Premier League team won 3–0 to eliminate Gillingham from the competition.
#### Match details
Key
- In result column, Gillingham's score shown first
- H = Home match
- A = Away match
- pen. = Penalty kick
- o.g. = Own goal
Results
### Football League Trophy
The 1992–93 Football League Trophy, a tournament exclusively for Second and Third Division teams, began with a first round in which the teams were drawn into groups of three, contested on a round-robin basis. Gillingham were grouped with Leyton Orient and Fulham, both of the Second Division. The first group game took place on 1 December and resulted in Orient defeating Gillingham 4–1. A week later, Gillingham played at home to Fulham and drew 3–3 in front of a crowd of 1,085, the lowest of the season at Priestfield. Fulham and Orient drew 2–2 in the final group game on 15 December, meaning that Gillingham finished bottom of the three-team group and were eliminated from the competition.
#### Match details
Key
- In result column, Gillingham's score shown first
- H = Home match
- A = Away match
- pen. = Penalty kick
- o.g. = Own goal
Results
## Players
Thirty-one players made at least one appearance for Gillingham during the season. Tony Butler made the most, playing in 50 of the team's 53 competitive matches. Four other players played over 40 times: Neil Smith (49), Green (48), Clark (44) and Barrett (42). Three players made only one appearance each: Kevin Hunt, Matt Joseph, and Osborne. Player-manager Roeder only included himself in the starting line-up on seven occasions out of a possible thirty-five, mainly due to injury.
Seventeen players scored at least one goal for the team. Crown was the highest scorer, with 5 goals in the Football League, 2 in the FA Cup, and 2 in the League Cup. His total of 9 goals was the lowest with which a player had finished a season as Gillingham's top scorer since the 1930s. Baker, Arnott and Forster were joint top scorers in Football League matches alone, each scoring 6 Third Division goals.
## Aftermath
Top goalscorer Crown left the club at the end of the season and joined Dagenham & Redbridge of the Conference. Aylott, who had played only one game since Christmas, also moved on, as did midfielder Mark O'Connor. In July, Roeder resigned as manager to take the equivalent role at Watford of the First Division, one of the clubs for which he had played. Watford were later fined by the Football Association, the governing body of the sport in England, for making an illegal approach to Roeder. Mike Flanagan was promoted from reserves and youth coach to become Gillingham's new manager. In the 1993–94 season, he led Gillingham to a 16th-place finish in the Third Division.
|
21,491,527 |
Gliding
| 1,172,019,042 |
Recreational activity and competitive air sport
|
[
"Articles containing video clips",
"Former Summer Olympic sports",
"Gliding"
] |
Gliding is a recreational activity and competitive air sport in which pilots fly unpowered aircraft known as gliders or sailplanes using naturally occurring currents of rising air in the atmosphere to remain airborne. The word soaring is also used for the sport.
Gliding as a sport began in the 1920s. Initially the objective was to increase the duration of flights but soon pilots attempted cross-country flights away from the place of launch. Improvements in aerodynamics and in the understanding of weather phenomena have allowed greater distances at higher average speeds. Long distances are now flown using any of the main sources of rising air: ridge lift, thermals and lee waves. When conditions are favourable, experienced pilots can now fly hundreds of kilometres before returning to their home airfields; occasionally flights of more than 1,000 kilometres (621 mi) are achieved.
Some competitive pilots fly in races around pre-defined courses. These gliding competitions test pilots' abilities to make best use of local weather conditions as well as their flying skills. Local and national competitions are organized in many countries, and there are biennial World Gliding Championships. Techniques to maximize a glider's speed around the day's task in a competition have been developed, including the optimum speed to fly, navigation using GPS and the carrying of water ballast. If the weather deteriorates pilots are sometimes unable to complete a cross-country flight. Consequently, they may need to land elsewhere, perhaps in a field, but motorglider pilots can avoid this by starting an engine.
Powered-aircraft and winches are the two most common means of launching gliders. These and other launch methods require assistance and facilities such as airfields, tugs, and winches. These are usually provided by gliding clubs who also train new pilots and maintain high safety standards. Although in most countries the standards of safety of the pilots and the aircraft are the responsibility of governmental bodies, the clubs and sometimes national gliding associations often have delegated authority.
## History
The development of heavier-than-air flight in the half century between Sir George Cayley's coachman in 1853 and the Wright brothers in 1903 mainly involved gliders (see History of aviation). However, the sport of gliding only emerged after the First World War, as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, which imposed severe restrictions on the manufacture and use of single-seat powered aircraft in Germany's Weimar Republic. Thus, in the 1920s and 1930s, while aviators and aircraft makers in the rest of the world were working to improve the performance of powered aircraft, the Germans were designing, developing and flying ever more efficient gliders and discovering ways of using the natural forces in the atmosphere to make them fly farther and faster. With the active support of the German government, there were 50,000 glider pilots by 1937. The first German gliding competition was held at the Wasserkuppe in 1920, organized by Oskar Ursinus. The best flight lasted two minutes and set a world distance record of 2 kilometres (1.2 mi). Within ten years, it had become an international event in which the achieved durations and distances had increased greatly. In 1931, Gunther Grönhoff flew 272 kilometres (169 mi) on the front of a storm from Munich to Kadaň (Kaaden in German) in Western Czechoslovakia, farther than had been thought possible.
In the 1930s, gliding spread to many other countries. In the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin gliding was a demonstration sport, and it was scheduled to be a full Olympic sport in the 1940 Games. A glider, the Olympia, was developed in Germany for the event, but World War II intervened. By 1939 the major gliding records were held by Russians, including a distance record of 748 kilometres (465 mi). During the war, the sport of gliding in Europe was largely suspended, though several German fighter aces in the conflict, including Erich Hartmann, began their flight training in gliders.
Gliding did not return to the Olympics after the war for two reasons: a shortage of gliders, and the failure to agree on a single model of competition glider. (Some in the community feared doing so would hinder development of new designs.) The re-introduction of air sports such as gliding to the Olympics has occasionally been proposed by the world governing body, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), but has been rejected on the grounds of lack of public interest.
In many countries during the 1950s, a large number of trained pilots wanted to continue flying. Many were also aeronautical engineers who could design, build and maintain gliders. They started both clubs and manufacturers, many of which still exist. This stimulated the development of both gliding and gliders, for example the membership of the Soaring Society of America increased from 1,000 to 16,000 by 1980. The increased numbers of pilots, greater knowledge and improving technology helped set new records, for example the pre-war altitude record was doubled by 1950, and the first 1,000-kilometre (620 mi) flight was achieved in 1964. New materials such as glass fiber and carbon fiber, advances in wing shapes and airfoils, electronic instruments, the Global Positioning System and improved weather forecasting have since allowed many pilots to make flights that were once extraordinary. Today over 550 pilots have made flights over 1,000 kilometres (620 mi). Although there is no Olympic competition, there are the World Gliding Championships. The first event was held at the Samedan in 1948. Since World War II it has been held every two years. There are now six classes open to both sexes, plus three classes for women and two junior classes. The latest worldwide statistics for 2011 indicate that Germany, the sport's birthplace, is still a center of the gliding world: it accounted for 27 percent of the world's glider pilots, and the three major glider manufacturers are still based there. However the meteorological conditions that allow soaring are common and the sport has been taken up in many countries. At the last count, there were over 111,000 active civilian glider pilots and 32,920 gliders, plus an unknown number of military cadets and aircraft. Clubs actively seek new members by giving trial flights, which are also a useful source of revenue for the clubs.
## Soaring
Glider pilots can stay airborne for hours by flying through air that is ascending as fast or faster than the glider itself is descending, thus gaining potential energy. The most commonly used sources of rising air are
- thermals (updrafts of warm air);
- ridge lift (found where the wind blows against the face of a hill and is forced to rise); and
- wave lift (standing waves in the atmosphere, analogous to the ripples on the surface of a stream).
Ridge lift rarely allows pilots to climb much higher than about 600 metres (2,000 ft) above the terrain; thermals, depending on the climate and terrain, can allow climbs in excess of 3,000 metres (9,800 ft) in flat country and much higher above mountains; wave lift has allowed a glider to reach an altitude of 23,202 metres (76,122 ft). In a few countries such as the UK, gliders may continue to climb into the clouds in uncontrolled airspace, but in many European countries the pilot must stop climbing before reaching the cloud base (see Visual Flight Rules).
### Thermals
Thermals begin as bubbles of rising air that are formed on the ground through the warming of the surface by sunlight. If the air contains enough moisture, the water will condense from the rising air and form cumulus clouds. When the air has little moisture or when an inversion stops the warm air from rising high enough for the moisture to condense, thermals do not create cumulus clouds. Without clouds or dust devils to mark the thermals, thermals are not always associated with any feature on the ground. The pilot must then use both skill and luck to find them using a sensitive vertical speed indicator called a variometer that quickly indicates climbs and descents. Occasionally reliable thermals can be found in the exhaust gases from power stations or from fires.
Once a thermal is encountered, the pilot can fly in tight circles to keep the glider within the thermal, thus gaining altitude before flying toward the destination or to the next thermal. This is known as "thermalling". Alternatively, glider pilots on cross-country flights may choose to 'dolphin'. This is when the pilot merely slows down in rising air, and then speeds up again in the non-rising air, thus following an undulating flight path. Dolphining allows the pilot to minimize the loss of height over great distances without spending time turning. Climb rates depend on conditions, but rates of several meters per second are common and can be maximized by gliders equipped with flaps. Thermals can also be formed in a line usually because of the wind or the terrain, creating cloud streets. These can allow the pilot to fly straight while climbing in continuous lift.
As it requires rising heated air, thermalling is most effective in mid-latitudes from spring through late summer. During winter, the sun's heat can only create weak thermals, but ridge and wave lift can still be used during this period.
### Ridge lift
A ridge soaring pilot uses upward air movements caused when the wind blows on to the sides of hills. It can also be augmented by thermals when the slopes also face the sun. In places where a steady wind blows, a ridge may allow virtually unlimited time aloft, although records for duration are no longer recognized because of the danger of exhaustion.
### Wave lift
The powerfully rising and sinking air in mountain waves was discovered by glider pilot, Wolf Hirth, in 1933. Gliders can sometimes climb in these waves to great altitudes, although pilots must use supplementary oxygen to avoid hypoxia.
This lift is often marked by long, stationary lenticular (lens-shaped) clouds lying perpendicular to the wind. Wave lift was used to set the current altitude record (to be ratified) of 23,202 metres (76,122 ft) on 2 September 2018 over El Calafate, Argentina. The pilots, Jim Payne and Tim Gardner, wore pressure suits. The current world distance record of 3,008 kilometres (1,869 mi) by Klaus Ohlmann (set on 21 January 2003) was also flown using mountain waves in South America.
A rare wave phenomenon is known as Morning Glory, a roll cloud producing strong lift. Pilots near Australia's Gulf of Carpentaria make use of it in springtime.
### Other sources of lift
The boundaries where two air masses meet are known as convergence zones. These can occur in sea breezes or in desert regions. In a sea-breeze front, cold air from the sea meets the warmer air from the land and creates a boundary between two masses of air like a shallow cold front. Glider pilots can gain altitude by flying along the intersection as if it were a ridge of land. Convergence may occur over considerable distances and so may permit virtually straight flight while climbing.
Glider pilots have occasionally been able to use a technique called "dynamic soaring" allowing a glider to gain kinetic energy by repeatedly crossing the boundary between air masses of different horizontal velocity. However, such zones of high "wind gradient" are usually too close to the ground to be used safely by gliders.
## Launch methods
Most gliders do not have engines or at least engines that would allow a take-off under their own power. Various methods are therefore used to get airborne. Each method requires specific training, therefore glider pilots must be in current practice for the type of launch being used. Licensing rules in some countries, such as the US, differentiate between aerotows and ground launch methods, due to the widely different techniques.
### Aerotowing
In an aerotow a powered aircraft is attached to a glider with a tow rope. Single-engined light aircraft or motor gliders are commonly used. The tow-plane takes the glider to the height and location requested by the pilot where the glider pilot releases the tow-rope. A weak link is often fitted to the rope to ensure that any sudden loads do not damage the airframe of the tow-plane or the glider. Under extreme loads the weak link will fail before any part of the glider or plane fails. There is a remote chance that the weak link might break at low altitude, and so pilots plan for this eventuality before launching.
During the aerotow, the glider pilot keeps the glider behind the tow-plane in either the "low tow" position, just below the wake from the tow-plane, or the "high tow" position just above the wake. In Australia the convention is to fly in low tow, whereas in the United States and Europe the high tow prevails. One rare aerotow variation is attaching two gliders to one tow-plane, using a short rope for the high-towed glider and a long rope for the low tow. The current record is nine gliders in the same aerotow.
### Winch launching
Gliders are often launched using a stationary ground-based winch mounted on a heavy vehicle. This method is widely used at many European clubs, often in addition to an aerotow service. The engine is usually powered by LPG, petrol or diesel, though hydraulic fluid engines and electrical motors are also used. The winch pulls in a 1,000 to 2,500-metre (3,000 to 7,500 ft) cable, made of high-tensile steel wire or a synthetic fiber, attached to the glider. The cable is released at a height of about 35% of the cable length after a short, steep ride. A strong headwind will result in higher launches.
Winch launches are much cheaper than aerotows and permit a higher launch frequency. A winch may also be used at sites where an aerotow could not operate, because of the shape of the field or because of noise restrictions. The height gained from a winch is usually less than that from an aerotow, so pilots need to find a source of lift soon after releasing from the cable, or else the flight will be short. A break in the cable or the weak link during a winch launch is a possibility for which pilots are trained.
### Auto-tow
Another method of launching, the "autotow", is rarer nowadays. The direct autotow requires a hard surface and a powerful vehicle that is attached to the glider by a long steel cable. After gently taking up slack in the cable, the driver accelerates hard and as a result the glider rises rapidly to about 400 metres (1,300 ft), especially if there is a good headwind and a runway of 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) or more. This method has also been used on desert dry lakes.
A variation on the direct autotow is known as the "reverse pulley" method. In this method, the truck drives towards the glider being launched. The cable passes around a pulley at the far end of the airfield, resulting in an effect similar to that of a winch launch.
### Bungee launch
Bungee launching was widely used in the early days of gliding, and occasionally gliders are still launched from the top of a gently sloping hill into a strong breeze using a substantial multi-stranded rubber band, or "bungee". For this launch method, the glider's main wheel rests in a small concrete trough. The hook normally used for winch-launching is instead attached to the middle of the bungee. Each end is then pulled by three or four people. One group runs slightly to the left, the other to the right. Once the tension in the bungee is high enough, the glider is released and the glider's wheel pops out of the trough. The glider gains just enough energy to leave the ground and fly away from the hill.
### Gravity launch
A glider can simply be pushed down a slope until gravity can create enough speed for it to take off.
## Cross-country
One of the measures of a glider's performance is the distance that it can fly for each meter it descends, known as its glide ratio. Glide ratio is dependent on an aircraft's class, and can typically range from 44:1 (for modern designs in the Standard Class) up to 70:1 (for the largest aircraft). A good gliding performance combined with regular sources of rising air enables modern gliders to fly long distances at high speeds. The weather is a major factor in determining cross-country speeds. The record average speed for 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) is 203.1 kilometres per hour (126.2 mph) and required unusually good conditions, but even in places with less favorable conditions (such as Northern Europe) a skilled pilot can expect to complete flights over 500 kilometres (310 mi) every year.
As the performance of gliders improved in the 1960s, the concept of flying as far away as possible became unpopular with the crews who had to retrieve the gliders. Pilots now usually plan to fly around a course (called a task) via turn-points, returning to the starting point.
In addition to just trying to fly further, glider pilots also race each other in competitions. The winner is the fastest, or, if the weather conditions are poor, the furthest round the course. Tasks of up to 1,000 km have been set and average speeds of 120 km/h are not unusual.
Initially, ground observers confirmed that pilots had rounded the turn-points. Later, the glider pilots photographed these places and submitted the film for verification. Today, gliders carry secure GNSS Flight Recorders that record the position every few seconds from GPS satellites. These recording devices now provide the proof that the turn-points have been reached.
National competitions generally last one week, with international championships running over two. The winner is the pilot who has amassed the greatest number of points over all the contest days. However, these competitions have as yet failed to draw much interest outside the gliding community for several reasons. Because it would be unsafe for many gliders to cross a start line at the same time, pilots can choose their own start time. Furthermore, gliders are not visible to the spectators for long periods during each day's contest and the scoring is complex, so traditional gliding competitions are difficult to televise. In an attempt to widen the sport's appeal, a new format, the Grand Prix, has been introduced. Innovations introduced in the Grand Prix format include simultaneous starts for a small number of gliders, cockpit mounted cameras, telemetry giving the positions of the gliders, tasks consisting of multiple circuits, and simplified scoring.
There is a decentralized Internet-based competition called the Online Contest, in which pilots upload their GPS data files and are automatically scored based on distance flown. Worldwide, 6,703 pilots registered for this contest in 2010.
### Maximizing average speed
Soaring pioneer Paul MacCready is usually credited with developing mathematical principles for optimizing the speed at which to fly when cross-country soaring, although it was first described by Wolfgang Späte in 1938. The speed to fly theory allows the optimal cruising speed between thermals to be computed, using thermal strength, glider performance and other variables. It accounts for the fact that if a pilot flies faster between thermals, the next thermal is reached sooner. However at higher speeds the glider also sinks faster, requiring the pilot to spend more time circling to regain the altitude. The MacCready speed represents the optimal trade-off between cruising and circling. Most competition pilots use MacCready theory to optimize their average speeds, and have the calculations programmed in their flight computers, or use a "McCready ring", a rotatable bezel on the glider's variometer to indicate the best speed to fly. The greatest factor in maximizing average speed, however, remains the ability of the pilot to find the strongest lift.
On cross-country flights on days when strong lift is forecast, pilots fly with water ballast stored in tanks or bags in the wings and fin. The fin tank is used to reduce trim drag by optimizing the center of gravity, which typically would shift forward if water is stored only in the wings ahead of the spar. Ballast enables a sailplane to attain its best lift-to-drag ratio (L/D) at higher speeds but slows its climb rate in thermals, in part because a sailplane with a heavier wing loading cannot circle within a thermal as tightly as one with a lower, unballasted wing loading. But if lift is strong, typically either from thermals or wave, the disadvantage of slower climbs is outweighed by the higher cruising speeds between lift areas. Thus, the pilot can improve the average speed over a course by several percent or achieve longer distances in a given time. If lift is weaker than expected, or if an off-field landing is imminent, the pilot can jettison the water ballast by opening the dump valves.
On days with particularly strong and widespread lift pilots can attain high average speeds by alternating periods of fast flight with pull-ups, merely slowing down in areas of lift without deviating from the course. This 'dolphining' technique can result in high average speeds because the height lost can be minimised until particularly strong lift is encountered when circling would be most effective.
### Badges
Achievements in gliding have been marked by the awarding of badges since the 1920s. For the lower badges, such as the first solo flight, national gliding federations set their own criteria. Typically, a bronze badge shows preparation for cross-country flight, including precise landings and witnessed soaring flights. Higher badges follow the standards set down by the Gliding Commission of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).
The FAI's Sporting Code defines the rules for observers and recording devices to validate the claims for badges that are defined by kilometres of distance and metres of altitude gained. The Silver-C badge was introduced in 1930. Earning the Silver Badge shows that a glider pilot has achieved an altitude gain of at least 1,000 metres (3,281 ft), made a five-hour duration flight, and has flown cross-country for a straight-line distance of at least 50 kilometres (31 mi): these three attainments are usually, but not invariably, achieved in separate flights. A pilot who has earned the Gold badge has achieved an altitude gain of 3,000 metres (9,843 ft), made a flight of five-hours duration, and flown cross-country for a straight-line distance of at least 300 kilometres (186 mi). A pilot who has completed the three parts of the Diamond Badge has flown 300 kilometres (186 mi) to a pre-defined goal, has flown 500 kilometres (311 mi) in one flight (but not necessarily to a pre-defined goal) and gained 5,000 metres (16,000 ft) in height. The FAI also issues a diploma for a flight of 1,000 kilometres (621 mi) and further diplomas for increments of 250 kilometres (155 mi).
### Landing out
If lift is not found during a cross-country flight, for example because of deteriorating weather, the pilot must choose a location to "land out". Although inconvenient and often mistaken for "emergency landings", landing out (or "outlanding") is a routine event in cross-country gliding. A location needs to be identified where the glider can land safely without damaging the glider, the pilot, or property such as crops or livestock. The glider and the pilot(s) can then be retrieved by road from the outlanding location using a purpose-built trailer. If this is not possible due to an inaccessible location such as a mountain range, the glider may be loaded into its trailer and airlifted by helicopter. In some instances, a tow-plane can be summoned to re-launch the aircraft.
### Use of engines or motors
Although adding to the weight and expense, some gliders are fitted with small power units and are known as motor gliders. This avoids the inconvenience of landing out. The power units can be internal combustion engines, electrical motors, or retractable jet engines. Retractable propellers are fitted to high performance sailplanes, though in another category, called touring motor gliders, non-retractable propellers are used. Some powered gliders are "self launching", which makes the glider independent of a tow plane. However some gliders have "sustainer" engines that can prolong flight but are not powerful enough for launching. All power units have to be started at a height that includes a margin that would still allow a safe landing out to be made, if there were a failure to start.
In a competition, using the engine ends the soaring flight. Unpowered gliders are lighter and, as they do not need a safety margin for starting the engine, they can safely thermal at lower altitudes in weaker conditions. Consequently, pilots in unpowered gliders may complete competition flights when some powered competitors cannot. Conversely, motor glider pilots can start the engine if conditions will no longer support soaring flight, while unpowered gliders will have to land out, away from the home airfield, requiring retrieval by road using the glider's trailer.
## Aerobatic competitions
World and European Aerobatic competitions are held regularly. In this type of competition, the pilots fly a program of maneuvers (such as inverted flight, loop, roll, and various combinations). Each maneuver has a rating called the "K-Factor". Maximum points are given for the maneuver if it is flown perfectly; otherwise, points are deducted. Efficient maneuvers also enable the whole program to be completed with the height available. The winner is the pilot with the most points.
## Hazards
Unlike hang gliders and paragliders, gliders surround the pilots with strong structures and have undercarriages to absorb impacts when landing. These features prevent injuries from otherwise minor incidents,
`but there are some hazards. Although training and safe procedures are central to the ethos of the sport, a few fatal accidents occur every year, almost all caused by pilot error. In particular there is a risk of mid-air collisions between gliders, because two pilots might choose to fly to the same area of lift and so might collide. To avoid other gliders and general aviation traffic, pilots must comply with the Rules of the Air and keep a good lookout. They also usually wear parachutes. In several European countries and Australia, the FLARM warning system is used to help avoid mid-air collisions between gliders. A few modern gliders have a ballistic emergency parachute to stabilize the aircraft after a collision.`
## Training and regulation
In addition to national laws controlling aviation, the sport in many countries is regulated through national gliding associations and then through local gliding clubs. Much of the regulation concerns safety and training.
Many clubs provide training for new pilots. The student flies with an instructor in a two-seat glider fitted with dual controls. The instructor performs the first launches and landings, typically from the back seat, but otherwise the student manages the controls until the student is deemed to have the skill and the airmanship necessary to fly solo. Simulators are also beginning to be used in training, especially during poor weather.
After the first solo flights glider pilots are required to stay within gliding range of their home airfield. In addition to solo flying, further flights are made with an instructor until the student is capable of taking a glider cross-country and of handling more difficult weather. Cross-country flights are allowed when they have sufficient experience to find sources of lift away from their home airfield, to navigate, and to select and land in a field if necessary. In most countries pilots must take a written examination on the regulations, navigation, use of the radio, weather, principles of flight and human factors. Proposals are being made to standardise the training requirements across European countries.
In addition to the regulation of pilots, gliders are inspected annually and after exceeding predetermined flight times. Maximum and minimum payloads are also defined for each glider. Because most gliders are designed to the same specifications of safety, the upper weight limit for a pilot, after allowing for a parachute, is usually 103 kilograms (227 lb). There is also a limit, 193 centimetres (6 ft 4 in), on the tallest pilots who can safely fit into a typical glider's cockpit.
## Challenges for the gliding movement
According to the FAI President, gliding as a sport faces challenges in the years ahead. These include:
- Time pressures on participants: gliding typically takes whole days that many people today find harder to devote. As a result, the average age of glider pilots is increasing.
- In some countries, the need for more land for housing is threatening small airfields. These airfields may also be used for other general aviation activities, and the addition of gliding may be difficult to accommodate. This can limit the number of available airfields and so it can require longer drives to reach them.
- Airspace: in many European countries, the growth of civil aviation is reducing the amount of uncontrolled airspace. In the U.S. new security requirements, and the growth of controlled airspace around cities, has also had some impact on where to fly.
- Competition from other activities: there is now a greater variety of similar sports such as hang gliding and paragliding that may attract potential glider pilots.
- Lack of publicity: without coverage by television or popular publications, many people are unaware that gliding is even a sport. Without this knowledge the public may have a poor understanding of how flying without an engine is possible and safe.
- Increasing costs: due to higher costs of fuel and insurance, and due to greater regulation requiring equipment such as new radios, or in some cases transponders, gliding costs have increased, although without the continuous use of engines and fuel, they are still considerably lower than traditional power flying.
## Related air sports
The two air sports that are most closely related to gliding are hang gliding and paragliding. Although all three sports rely on rising air, there are significant differences which are listed in detail in a comparison of sailplanes hang gliders and paragliders. The main difference is that both hang gliders and paragliders are simpler, less sophisticated and cheaper aircraft that use the pilot's feet as the undercarriage. All paragliders and most hang gliders have no protective structure around the pilot. However, the dividing line between basic gliders and sophisticated hang-gliders is becoming less distinct. For example, hang gliders typically use fabric wings, shaped over a framework, but hang gliders with rigid wings and three-axis controls are also available. The lower air speeds and lower glide ratios of typical hang gliders means that shorter cross-country distances are flown than in modern gliders. Paragliders are more basic craft. They are also foot-launched, but their wings usually have no frames and their shape is created by the flow and pressure of air. The airspeeds and glide ratios of paragliders are generally lower still than the typical hang gliders, and so their cross-country flights are even shorter. Radio-controlled gliding uses scale-models of gliders mainly for ridge soaring; however thermic aeromodelling craft are also used.
## See also
- Glider (sailplane)
- Glossary of gliding and soaring
- Flying and gliding animals
- List of notable glider pilots
|
227,294 |
Indiana-class battleship
| 1,164,947,297 |
Pre-dreadnought battleship class of the United States Navy
|
[
"Battleship classes",
"Indiana-class battleships",
"World War I battleships of the United States"
] |
The Indiana class was a class of three pre-dreadnought battleships launched in 1893. These were the first battleships built by the United States Navy comparable to contemporary European ships, such as the British HMS Hood. Authorized in 1890 and commissioned between November 1895 and April 1896, these were relatively small battleships with heavy armor and ordnance that pioneered the use of an intermediate battery. Specifically intended for coastal defense, their freeboard was insufficient to deal well with the waves of the open ocean. The turrets lacked counterweights, and the main belt armor was placed too low to be effective under most conditions.
The ships were named Indiana, Massachusetts, and Oregon and were designated Battleship Number 1 through 3. All three served in the Spanish–American War, although Oregon—which was stationed on the West Coast—had to cruise 14,000 nautical miles (26,000 km; 16,000 mi) around South America to the East Coast first. After the war, Oregon returned to the Pacific and participated in the Philippine–American War and Boxer Rebellion, while her sister ships were restricted to training missions in the Atlantic Ocean. After 1903, the obsolete battleships were decommissioned and recommissioned several times, the last time during World War I when Indiana and Massachusetts served as training ships, while Oregon was a transport escort for the Siberian Intervention.
In 1919, all three ships were decommissioned for the final time. Indiana was sunk in shallow water as an explosives test target a year later and sold for scrap in 1924. Massachusetts was scuttled off the coast of Pensacola in 1920 and used as an artillery target. The wreck was never scrapped and is now a Florida Underwater Archaeological Preserve. Oregon was initially preserved as a museum, but was sold for scrap during World War II. The scrapping was later halted and the stripped hulk was used as an ammunition barge during the battle of Guam. The hulk was finally sold for scrap in 1956.
## Background
The Indiana class was very controversial at the time of its approval by the United States Congress. A policy board convened by the Secretary of the Navy Benjamin F. Tracy came up with an ambitious 15-year naval construction program on 16 July 1889, three years after the Maine and the Texas were authorized. The battleships in their plan would include ten first-rate long-range battleships with a 17 knots (31 km/h; 20 mph) top speed and a steaming radius of 5,400 nmi (10,000 km; 6,200 mi) at 10 kn (19 km/h; 12 mph)—6,500 nmi (12,000 km; 7,500 mi) maximum. These ocean-going ships were envisioned as a possible fleet in being, a fleet capable of raiding an enemy's home ports and intended to deter powerful warships from ranging too far from home. Twenty-five short-range second-rate battleships would provide home defense in both the Atlantic and Pacific and support the faster and larger long-range vessels. With a range of roughly 2,700 nmi (5,000 km; 3,100 mi) at 10 knots and a draft of 23.5 ft (7.2 m), they would roam from the St. Lawrence River in the north to the Windward Islands and Panama in the south and would be able to enter all the ports in the southern United States.
It was proposed, probably for cost reasons, that the short-range battleships should have a hierarchy of three subclasses. The first would mount four 13-inch (330 mm) guns each on eight 8,000-long-ton (8,100 t; 9,000-short-ton) ships, the second would mount four 12-inch (305 mm) guns each on ten 7,150-long-ton (7,260 t; 8,010-short-ton) ships, and the third would mount two 12-inch and two 10-inch (254 mm) guns each on five 6,000-long-ton (6,100 t; 6,700-short-ton) ships. The two battleships already under construction, Texas and Maine, were to be grouped under the last class. In addition, 167 smaller ships, including rams, cruisers and torpedo boats, would be built, coming to a total cost of \$281.55 million, approximately equal to the sum of the entire US Navy budget during the previous 15 years (adjusted for inflation, \$6.6 billion in 2009 dollars).
Congress balked at the plan, seeing in it an end to the United States policy of isolationism and the beginning of imperialism. Even some supporters of naval expansion were wary; Senator Eugene Hale feared that because the proposal was so large, the entire bill would be shot down and no money appropriated for any ships. However, in April 1890, the United States House of Representatives approved funding for three 8,000-long ton battleships. Tracy, trying to soothe tensions within Congress, remarked that these ships were so powerful only twelve would be necessary instead of the 35 called for in the original plan. He also slashed the operating costs of the Navy by giving the remaining Civil War-era monitors—which were utterly obsolete by this time—to navy militias operated by the states. The appropriation was also approved by the Senate, and in total three coast-defense battleships (the Indiana class), a cruiser, and a torpedo boat were given official approval and funding on 30 June 1890.
The first class of short-range ships as envisioned by the policy board were to mount 13-inch/35 caliber and new 5-inch (127 mm) guns, with 17 in (432 mm) of belt armor, 2.75 in (70 mm) of deck armor and 4 in (102 mm) of armor over the casemates. The Indiana class, as actually built, exceeded the design in displacement by 25 percent, but most other aspects were relatively similar to the original plan. An 18-inch (457 mm) belt and a secondary battery of 8-inch (203 mm) and 6-inch (152 mm) guns were adopted, the latter because the Bureau of Ordnance did not have the capability to construct rapid-firing 5-inch weaponry. The larger weapons were much slower firing and much heavier, but without the bigger guns, the ships would not be able to penetrate the armor of foreign battleships.
## Design
### General characteristics
The Indiana-class ships were designed specifically for coastal defense and were not intended for offensive actions. This design view was reflected in their moderate coal endurance, relatively small displacement and low freeboard, which limited seagoing capability. However, they were heavily armed and armored, so much in fact that Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships describes them as "attempting too much on a very limited displacement." They resembled the British battleship HMS Hood, but were 60 ft (18 m) shorter and featured an intermediate battery consisting of eight 8-inch guns not found in European ships, giving them a very respectable amount of firepower for their time.
The original design of the Indiana class included bilge keels, but with keels they would not fit in any of the American drydocks at the time, so they were omitted during construction. This meant a reduction in stability and caused a serious problem for Indiana, when both main turrets broke loose from their clamps in heavy seas a year after being commissioned. Because the turrets were not centrally balanced, they swung from side to side with the motion of the ship, until they were secured with heavy ropes. When the ship encountered more bad weather four months later, she promptly steamed back to port for fear the clamps would break again. This convinced the navy that bilge keels were necessary and they were subsequently installed on all three ships.
### Armament
Given their limited displacement, the Indiana class had formidable armament for the time: four 13-inch guns, an intermediate battery of eight 8-inch guns and a secondary battery of four 6-inch guns, twenty Hotchkiss 6-pounders, and six Maxim-Nordenfelt 1-pounders, as well as six 18 inch (450 mm) tubes.
The 13-inch gun was 35 calibers long and used black powder, giving a range of about 12,000 yards (11,000 m) at 15 degrees of elevation. At 6,000 yards (5,500 m), a shell was expected to penetrate 10–12 inches (250–300 mm) of side armor. The four guns were mounted in two centerline turrets, located fore and aft. The turrets were originally designed to feature sloping side armor, but space requirements made this impossible without using significantly larger gun turrets or redesigning the gun mounts (which was later done for the Illinois-class battleships). The ships' low freeboard greatly hindered the use of the main battery in rough weather conditions, because the deck would become awash. Also, because the ship lacked a counterweight to offset the weight of the gun barrels, the ship would list in the direction the guns were aimed. This reduced the maximum arc of elevation (and thus range) to about five degrees, brought the main armor belt under water on that side, and exposed the unarmored bottom on the other. It was considered in 1901 to replace the turrets with new balanced models used in later ships, but that was decided to be too costly as the ships were already obsolete. Instead, counterweights were added, which partially solved the problem. The hydraulic rammers and turning mechanisms of the 8-inch turrets were also replaced by faster and more efficient electric equivalents, new sights were fitted on Indiana and Massachusetts, and new turret hoists were installed to improve the reloading speed, but the gun mountings never performed in an entirely satisfactory manner.
The eight 8-inch guns were mounted in pairs in four wing turrets placed on the superstructure. Their arc of fire, although big on paper, was in reality limited. Adjacent gun positions and superstructure would be damaged by their muzzle blast if the gun was trained alongside it, a defect also suffered by the 13-inch guns. The smaller 6-inch guns were mounted in twin wing casemates midships on the main deck level, with a 6-pounder in between. The other Hotchkiss 6-pounders lined the superstructure and bridge decks. Four of the 1-pounders were placed in hull casemates at the bow and stern of the ship and two more in the fighting tops of the masts. In 1908, all the 6-inch and most of the lighter guns were removed to compensate for the counterweights added to the main battery and because ammunition supply for the guns was considered problematic. A year later, twelve 3-inch (76 mm)/50-caliber single-purpose guns were added midships and in the fighting tops.
Sources conflict on the number of torpedo tubes originally included in the ships, but it is clear they were located on the berth deck and had above-water ports located on the extreme front and aft and midships. Located too close to the waterline to allow use while moving and vulnerable to gunfire when opened, they were considered useless and were quickly reduced in number, and removed entirely before 1908.
In 1918 there was a proposal to modify the three Indiana-class ships to carry a single 98-caliber 9-inch (229 mm) gun built by lining down a 50-caliber 14-inch (356 mm) gun to that size. Preliminary design of the turret for the gun was completed in October for service in mid-1919, but the end of the war the following month caused the program to be converted into a test program for long-range guns. The Bureau of Ordnance decided to first test a 7-inch (178 mm) gun lined down to 3 inches as a proof of concept, but those tests did not commence until 1922.
### Protection
With the exception of the deck armor, 8-inch turrets and conning tower—which consisted of conventional nickel steel—the Indiana class was protected with the new Harvey armor. Its main protection was a belt 18 in (457 mm) thick, placed along two-thirds of the length of the hull from 3 ft (0.91 m) above to 1 ft (0.30 m) under the waterline. Beyond this point, the belt gradually grew thinner until it ended 4 ft 3 in (1.30 m) under the waterline, where the belt was only 8.5 in (220 mm) thick. Below the belt the ship had no armor, only a double bottom. On both ends the belt was connected to the barbettes of the main guns with 14-inch (360 mm) armored bulkheads. In the waterline sections outside this central citadel, compartments were filled with compressed cellulose, intended to self-seal when damaged. Between the deck and the main belt, 5-inch hull armor was used. The deck armor was 2.75 in (70 mm) thick inside the citadel and 3 in (76 mm) outside it. The hollow conning tower was a single forging 10 inches thick. The 13-inch gun battery had 15 in (380 mm) of vertical turret plating and 17-inch-thick (430 mm) barbettes, while the 8-inch cannons had only 6 inches of vertical turret plating and 8-inch-thick (200 mm) barbettes. The casemates protecting the 6-inch guns were 5 inches thick and the other casemates, lighter guns, shell hoists and turret crowns were all lightly armored.
The placement of the belt armor was based on the draft from the design, which was 24 feet (7.3 m) with a normal load of 400 long tons (406 t; 448 short tons) of coal on board. Her total coal storage capacity was 1,600 long tons (1,626 t; 1,792 short tons), and fully loaded her draft would increase to 27 feet (8.2 m), entirely submerging the armor belt. During actual service, especially at war, the ships were kept fully loaded whenever possible, rendering her belt armor almost useless. That this was not considered in the design outraged the Walker policy board–convened in 1896 to evaluate the existing American battleships and propose a design for the new Illinois-class battleships–and they set a standard that the load of coal and ammunition that future ships were designed for had to be at least two-thirds of the maximum, so similar problems would be prevented in new ships.
### Propulsion
Two vertical inverted triple expansion reciprocating steam engines powered by four double-ended Scotch boilers drove twin propellers, while two single-ended Scotch boilers supplied steam for auxiliary machinery. The engines were designed to provide 9,000 indicated horsepower (6,700 kW), giving the ships a top speed of 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph). During sea trials, which were conducted with limited amounts of coal, ammunition and supplies on board, it was found that the indicated horsepower and top speed exceeded design values and a significant variation between the three ships existed. The engines of Indiana delivered 9,700 ihp (7,200 kW), giving a top speed of 15.6 kn (28.9 km/h; 18.0 mph). Massachusetts had a top speed of 16.2 kn (30.0 km/h; 18.6 mph) with 10,400 ihp (7,800 kW) and Oregon reached a speed of 16.8 kn (31.1 km/h; 19.3 mph) with 11,000 ihp (8,200 kW). Eight Babcock & Wilcox boilers, including four with superheaters, were installed on Indiana in 1904 and the same number on Massachusetts in 1907 to replace the outdated Scotch boilers.
## Ships in class
### Indiana (BB-1)
Commissioned in 1895, Indiana did not participate in any notable events until the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in 1898, when Indiana was part of the North Atlantic Squadron under Rear Admiral William T. Sampson. His squadron was ordered to the Spanish port of San Juan in an attempt to intercept and destroy Admiral Cevera's Spanish squadron, which was en route to the Caribbean from Spain. The harbor was empty, but Indiana and the rest of the squadron bombarded it for two hours before realizing their mistake. Three weeks later news arrived that Commodore Schley's Flying Squadron had found Cervera and was now blockading him in the port of Santiago de Cuba. Sampson reinforced Schley two days later and assumed overall command. Cervera saw that his situation was desperate and attempted to run the blockade on 3 July 1898. Indiana did not join in the chase of the fast Spanish cruisers because of her extreme eastern position on the blockade and low speed caused by engine problems, but was near the harbor entrance when the Spanish destroyers Pluton and Furor emerged. Together with the battleship Iowa and armed yacht Gloucester she opened fire, destroying the lightly armored enemy ships.
After the war, Indiana returned to training exercises before being decommissioned in 1903. The battleship was recommissioned in January 1906 to function as a training vessel until she was decommissioned again in 1914. Her third commission was in 1917 when Indiana served as a training ship for gun crews during World War I. She was decommissioned for the final time on 31 January 1919, shortly after being reclassified Coast Battleship Number 1 so that the name Indiana could be assigned to the newly authorized—but never completed—battleship Indiana (BB-50). She was sunk in shallow water as a target in underwater explosion and aerial bombing tests in November 1920. Her hulk was sold for scrap on 19 March 1924.
### Massachusetts (BB-2)
Between being commissioned in 1896 and the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in 1898, Massachusetts conducted training exercises off the eastern coast of the United States. During the war, she was placed in the Flying Squadron under Commodore Winfield Scott Schley. Schley went searching for Cervera's Spanish squadron and found it in the port of Santiago. The battleship was part of the blockade fleet until 3 July, but missed the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, because she had steamed to Guantánamo Bay the night before to resupply coal. The next day, the battleship came back to Santiago, where she and Texas fired at the Spanish cruiser Reina Mercedes, which was being scuttled by the Spanish in a failed attempt to block the harbor entrance channel.
During the next seven years, Massachusetts cruised the Atlantic coast and eastern Caribbean as a member of the North Atlantic Squadron and then served for a year as a training ship for Naval Academy midshipmen until she was decommissioned in January 1906. In May 1910, she was placed in reduced commission as a training ship again before entering the Atlantic Reserve Fleet in September 1912, where she stayed until being decommissioned in May 1914. Massachusetts was recommissioned in June 1917 to serve as a training ship for gun crews during World War I. She was decommissioned for the final time on 31 March 1919, after being redesignated Coast Battleship Number 2 two days earlier so her name could be reused for Massachusetts (BB-54). On 6 January 1921 she was scuttled off the coast of Pensacola and used as an artillery target for Fort Pickens. The Navy attempted to sell her for scrap, but no buyer could be found and in 1956 the ship was declared the property of the state of Florida. The wreck is currently one of the Florida Underwater Archaeological Preserves and serves as an artificial reef.
### Oregon (BB-3)
Oregon served for a short time with the Pacific Station before being ordered on a voyage around South America to the East Coast in March 1898 in preparation for war with Spain. She departed from San Francisco on 19 March, and reached Jupiter Inlet on 24 May, stopping several times for additional coal on the way. A journey of over 14,000 nautical miles was completed in 66 days, which was considered a remarkable achievement at the time. The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships describes the effect of the journey on the American public and government as follows: "On one hand the feat had demonstrated the many capabilities of a heavy battleship in all conditions of wind and sea. On the other it swept away all opposition for the construction of the Panama Canal, for it was then made clear that the country could not afford to take two months to send warships from one coast to the other each time an emergency arose." After completing her journey, Oregon was ordered to join the blockade at Santiago as part of the North Atlantic Squadron under Rear Admiral Sampson. She took part in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, where she and the cruiser Brooklyn were the only ships fast enough to chase down the Spanish cruiser Cristobal Colon, forcing its surrender. Around this time, she received the nickname "Bulldog of the Navy", most likely because of her high bow wave—known as "having a bone in her teeth" in nautical slang—and perseverance during the cruise around South America and the battle of Santiago.
After the war, Oregon was refitted in New York City before she was sent back to the Pacific, where she served as a guard ship for two years. She served for a year in the Philippines during the Philippine–American War and then spent a year in China at Wusong during the Boxer Rebellion until May 1901, when she was ordered back to the United States for an overhaul. In March 1903, Oregon returned to Asiatic waters and the ship remained in the Far East, returning only shortly before decommissioning in April 1906. Oregon was recommissioned in August 1911, but saw little activity and was officially placed on reserve status in 1914. On 2 January 1915, the ship was returned to full commission and sailed to San Francisco for the Panama–Pacific International Exposition. A year later, she was back to reserve status, only to be returned to full commission in April 1917 when the United States joined World War I. Oregon acted as one of the escorts for transport ships during the Siberian Intervention. In June 1919, she was decommissioned, but a month later she was temporarily recommissioned as the reviewing ship for President Woodrow Wilson during the arrival of the Pacific Fleet at Seattle. In October 1919, she was decommissioned for the final time. As a result of the Washington Naval Treaty, Oregon was declared "incapable of further warlike service" in January 1924. In June 1925, she was loaned to the State of Oregon, who used her as a floating monument and museum in Portland.
In February 1941, Oregon was redesignated IX-22. Due to the outbreak of World War II, it was decided that the scrap value of the ship was more important than her historical value, so she was sold. Her stripped hulk was later returned to the Navy and used as an ammunition barge during the battle of Guam, where she remained for several years. During a typhoon in November 1948, she broke loose and drifted out to sea. She was located 500 mi (800 km) southeast of Guam and towed back. She was sold on 15 March 1956 and scrapped in Japan.
## See also
- Battleship Illinois (replica)
|
61,363 |
Epacris impressa
| 1,172,086,328 |
Plant of the heath family, Ericaceae, that is native to southeast Australia
|
[
"Epacris",
"Ericales of Australia",
"Flora of New South Wales",
"Flora of South Australia",
"Flora of Tasmania",
"Flora of Victoria (state)",
"Plants described in 1805"
] |
Epacris impressa, also known as common heath, is a species of plant in the heath family Ericaceae. It is native to south-eastern Australia (the states of Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and New South Wales). French botanist Jacques Labillardière collected the species in 1793 and described it in 1805. Four forms have been identified, but no subspecies are recognised. Growing in heathland, shrubland or open forest, it is generally a small shrub around 0.5 to 1 m (1 ft 8 in to 3 ft 3 in) tall, with small stiff leaves. The red, pink or white tube-like flowers appear from late autumn to early spring. Honeyeater birds, particularly the eastern spinebill, feed upon the nectar of the flowers. It regenerates after bushfire by seed or by resprouting.
A highly regarded garden plant, the common heath was first cultivated in England in 1825; over seventy named cultivars have been developed, most of which have now vanished. A pink-flowered form, often referred to as "pink heath", is the floral emblem of the state of Victoria. Epacris impressa has proven a difficult plant to propagate reliably, which has limited its use in horticulture and revegetation. It grows best in well-drained but moist soil in a semishaded position.
## Description
Epacris impressa grows as a woody shrub with an erect habit, sometimes reaching 2 to 3 m (6 ft 7 in to 9 ft 10 in) in height although plants in the range of 0.5 to 1 m (1 ft 8 in to 3 ft 3 in) tall are more commonly observed. The branches are stiff and have small leaves with prickly, pointed apices that are 8–16 mm (3⁄8–5⁄8 in) long. The flowers mainly occur between late autumn and early spring, arising in dense and sometimes pendulous clusters along the stems. White, pink or red in colour, they are 1–2 cm (3⁄8–3⁄4 in) and are narrow and tubular with five indentations on the base. The corolla of the flower is formed by five petals, fused at the base to form a tubelike structure, with the free petal ends forming five lobes at the apex. There are five whorled sepals at the base of the corolla. Within the corolla is a central style that persists through development of the fruit. The style connects the stigma at the apex and ovary at the base, where the nectar is also located. Different colour forms are often observed growing near each other. The fruit is a 5-locule capsule that is about 3.5 mm (1⁄8 in) in diameter. It is globular in shape, sometimes with one end flattened. Initially green, it dries and splits, releasing numerous tiny seeds.
## Taxonomy
The type specimen of common heath was collected in 1793 by French botanist Jacques Labillardière in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) during a voyage with Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux. Labillardière described it in his 1805 work Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen, giving it its current name Epacris impressa. The Latin specific epithet impressa (meaning "impressed" or "indented") alludes to the indentations on the floral tube. The original mounted specimen is currently held at the National Herbarium of Victoria at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne.
A number of specimens once described as separate species are now regarded as Epacris impressa, with no recognised subspecies. Scottish botanist Robert Brown described Epacris ruscifolia in his 1810 work Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen alongside E. impressa. John Lindley described Epacris tomentosa from plant specimens collected during the third expedition of Thomas Mitchell in 1838. Upon encountering Epacris impressa on Mount William in the Grampians, Mitchell remarked that it was "A most beautiful downy-leaved Epacris with large, curved, purple flowers, allied to E. grandiflora but much handsomer". Dr Robert Graham described Epacris ceriflora (which he spelt ceraeflora) from plants cultivated at the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens in 1832. The seed had come from Tasmania, the resulting progeny flowering over April and May 1832. A year later, he described E. nivalis, which he called an "exceedingly beautiful species", from specimens growing in Loddiges nursery. He also noted a form with long corollas that had been called E. variabilis that was in cultivation at the time, and noted it was difficult to describe the precise characteristics that distinguished E. ceraeflora, E. nivalis, E. variabilis and E. impressa.
In his landmark Flora Australiensis (1869), George Bentham argued that several previously described species were in fact a single species – E. impressa, uniting E. variabilis, a short red-flowered E. campanulata, E. ruscifolia, which had narrow leaves and long flowers, the white-flowered E. nivalis, and short white-flowered E. ceraeflora. He re-classified as a separate species – E. reclinata – several plants that Allan Cunningham had collected in the Blue Mountains and classified as E. impressa.
In the same work, Bentham named and described two naturally occurring varieties, Epacris impressa var. grandiflora and E. impressa var. ovata. Plant specimens designated as grandiflora had been collected in the Wimmera, the Grampians (including those previously designated as E. tomentosa) and at Stawell in Victoria. Those classified as ovata were collected at Twofold Bay and Mount Imlay in southeastern New South Wales as well as Woolnorth and Rocky Cape in northern Tasmania. Bentham noted that, although variable, all forms had "five impressed cavities outside, alternating with the stamens immediately above the ovary."
In his 1972 publication A Handbook to Plants in Victoria, Australian botanist Jim Willis expressed his view that dividing the species into subspecies was not feasible given that common heath is highly variable in flower colour and leaf shape, though he conceded the Grampians race grandiflora might be distinctive based on its larger corollas and coarser and hairier foliage. Currently, both grandiflora and ovata are regarded as synonyms of Epacris impressa rather than being classified as distinct varieties. The plant populations that best fit Bentham's original description of grandiflora, also known as Grampians heath, occur naturally on sandstone at locations including Mount Zero, Mount Stapylton and the Black Range. Other nearby populations are regarded as having intermediate characteristics, including those in the Victoria Range and Mount Arapiles. Although not recognised in the Australian Plant Census, the variety is noted as "rare" on the list of Advisory List of Rare or Threatened Plants in Victoria issued by the Department of Environment and Primary Industries.
### Variation in flower colour and length
In 1977 Helen Stace and Yvonne Fripp from La Trobe University studied 195 populations of Epacris impressa in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania and found that 120 consisted of mixed stands of two or more races while 75 populations were of one race only. They identified four races based on the following corolla characteristics:
- white-flowered with a markedly shortened corolla that is 9–12 mm (3⁄8–1⁄2 in) long and red-purple anthers, usually found in sites with greater sun exposure. Occurring throughout the species range, this form is the most widely distributed.
- pink-flowered, with a longer corolla that is 12–19 mm (1⁄2–3⁄4 in) long and cream-white anthers, in more shaded sites. This form occurs throughout the species range. Field work in Victoria and Tasmania found that pink-flowered plants in mixed populations often have pink or red anthers.
- long scarlet race, with orange-red flowers and corolla 15–19 mm (5⁄8–3⁄4 in) long and cream-white anthers. Those from the granitic mountains of Wilsons Promontory and near W Tree in East Gippsland in Victoria flower between April and November. Other localities where this race has been recorded include the Howe Ranges and Clyde Mountain in New South Wales.
- broad pink or white, the grandiflora race from the Grampians and Mount Arapiles in Victoria. Plants of this race are taller, often reaching 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) in height. White or pink colour bear no relation to corolla length. Plants from Mount Arapiles are always pink-flowered.
The long-pink and short-white races frequently occur in close proximity to each other; in these mixed populations the former tends to flower in winter and the latter in spring. The question has been raised whether these different forms are becoming incompatible. However, controlled cross-pollination between plants with short and long corollas showed that there was no incompatibility between them.
Pink-flowering populations have a relatively distinct genetic makeup, whereas red or white flowering populations have more evident sharing of genetic traits. Research based on DNA profiling has revealed substantial genetic diversity within and between flower colour races and site populations. This has implications for vegetation projects in that provenance material needs to be collected from a wide geographic area to maintain this diversity.
## Distribution
Epacris impressa is commonly found in coastal regions and nearby foothills, ranging from Kangaroo Island and the southern Mount Lofty Ranges in South Australia across southern Victoria, extending to the Grampians and the Little Desert, and northwards to southern New South Wales as far as the Clyde River in the Budawang Range. It is also widespread in Tasmania. Plants are recorded at altitudes up to 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) at Mount Stradbroke and Mount Tingaringy in East Gippsland. The species grows in widely diverse habitats including sand and clay heathland, herb-rich and heathy woodland, lowland and shrubby dry forests, riparian thickets, montane rocky shrubland and rocky outcrops.
## Ecology
Honeyeaters such as the eastern spinebill are attracted to the flowers. As the bird gathers the nectar, the pollen, which has fins, attaches itself to the feathers on the heads of the birds and is carried to other flowers, aiding cross pollination. A study in forests near Hobart in Tasmania found that the eastern spinebill arrived in the area at the same time the common heath was in flower in March, and left once flowering had finished. Other honeyeaters, such as the strong-billed, crescent and yellow-throated honeyeaters, fed occasionally at common heath flowers. Field work in the Mount Lofty Ranges in South Australia recorded the white-plumed and New Holland honeyeaters, as well as the crescent honeyeater and the eastern spinebill.
Insects recorded visiting white-flowered plants include the Australian painted lady (Vanessa kershawi) and yellow admiral (V. itea), as well as bees. Field work in southern Tasmania showed that the introduced bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) sometimes robbed nectar by piercing the base of the tube. This then allowed honeybees (Apis mellifera) to retrieve nectar the same way. Epacris impressa is host to the scale insect Lecanodiaspis microcribraria.
A field study of the invasion of the pathogen Phytophthora cinnamomi into the Brisbane Ranges National Park in Victoria in 1971 indicated that Epacris impressa was moderately susceptible to the pathogen. Inoculation of seedlings confirmed this. Fieldwork in the Brisbane Ranges National Park in 1985 showed that there was some evidence that E. impressa seedlings were able to recolonise areas that had been infested with P. cinnamomi a decade before.
Epacris impressa regenerates after bushfire by seed and resprouting. Fieldwork in heathland in the Otway Ranges in the years following the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires showed that large numbers of E. impressa seedlings appeared in some areas, and that flowering took place as early as the second year after the fire.
The roots of Epacris impressa are colonized by fungi forming ericoid mycorrhiza. It is believed that the fungal species vary between regions.
## Cultivation
Propagated from seed collected by William Baxter in southern Australia, common heath was introduced into cultivation in England by the Clapton Nursery in 1825. Due to its frost-tenderness, it was mostly restricted to greenhouse cultivation. In 1873, a variety known as Epacris impressa alba was recorded as being grown commercially for cut flowers in Boston in the United States. While initially popular – over seventy cultivars appeared in the literature at the time – most have since disappeared.
Plants grow best in a moist but well-drained, acidic soil, with added peat being helpful. They may be grown in coastal gardens in a sheltered position, and generally require some degree of shade. Once established, plants can tolerate short dry spells. As they age, plants may become straggly, but benefit from hard pruning after fertilizing and watering, which promotes compact, bushier growth. Common heath can be short-lived and difficult to transplant, though it can be readily grown as a pot plant. Along with other members of the genus, Epacris impressa initially proved difficult to grow and maintain on original soil in the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra.
Propagation both by seed and cuttings is difficult, reducing potential production by plant nurseries. Germination rates of soil-stored seeds have been found to increase substantially with the application of heat and aqueous solutions of smoke. The most satisfactory results from cuttings can be achieved by using tip growth, taken six weeks after the cessation of flowering, and kept under a fogging system for twenty weeks. Plantsman Neil Marriott recommends semi-hardened cutting material taken in spring and autumn. Roots of cuttings are brittle and easily damaged.
### Cultivars
The following forms have been selected and grown for cultivation:
'Bega'
This is a form from Bega in southern New South Wales that has bright red flowers and grows to 60 cm (2.0 ft) high. It is regarded as one of the more reliable forms in cultivation. White- and pink-flowered forms from the same region also have horticultural potential.
'Cranbourne Bells' and other double-flowered forms
'Cranbourne Bells' is a double-flowered form with pink flower buds fading to white as they open. Registered by the Australian Cultivar Registration Authority in 1988, it occurred naturally near the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne in Victoria, but its habitat has since been cleared. A double-flowered form of Epacris impressa was collected as early as the 1860s in Victoria when Government Botanist Ferdinand von Mueller sent a specimen to Kew Gardens. This was examined by botanist William Hemsley in 1865. The specimen, labelled as Epacris impressa var. pleniflora, originated from Stawell in western Victoria. Another specimen given the same name by Mueller was collected at Nunawading, today a suburb of Melbourne. Charles French, co-founder of the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria, collected a white double-flowered form from Cheltenham south of Melbourne in 1859 and a pink double-flowered form from Dromana on the Mornington Peninsula in about 1862. These were later sent as rooted cuttings to Veitch Nurseries in England. Double-flowered forms of various colours have since been found throughout Victoria, but only single plants have been observed in any location, and they are still regarded as a rarity. A naturally occurring form of the variety grandiflora with rosebud-like double flowers is also grown.
'Spring Pink'
A form with deep pink flowers on long spikes, 'Spring Pink' appears in spring. It grows to 60 cm (2.0 ft) high.
## Floral emblem of Victoria
In 1951, at a meeting of representatives of government and other bodies, it was agreed that the pink form of the common heath, the "pink heath", be adopted as the official floral emblem for the state of Victoria. Victoria was the first Australian state to adopt a floral emblem. The proclamation, made on 11 November 1958 by the Governor, Dallas Brooks, was as follows:
> I, the Governor of the State of Victoria, in the Commonwealth of Australia, by and with the advice of the Executive Council of the said State, do by this my Proclamation declare that the Pink Form of the Common Heath, Epacris impressa Labill., be adopted as the Floral Emblem for the State of Victoria"
An Australian stamp series of state floral emblems was issued in 1968. The pink heath was featured on the 13 cent stamp. In 2014, a 70-cent stamp labelled as "Common Heath" was issued. The pink heath is also depicted on the Victorian driver's licence. In 1973, a depiction of pink heath was added to the armorial bearings for Victoria.
## See also
- Erica – African–European heath spp.
|
199,665 |
Helicobacter pylori
| 1,171,613,231 |
Species of bacteria
|
[
"Bacteria described in 1989",
"Conditions diagnosed by stool test",
"Helicobacter pylori",
"Infectious causes of cancer"
] |
Helicobacter pylori, previously known as Campylobacter pylori, is a gram-negative, microaerophilic, spiral (helical) bacterium usually found in the stomach. Its helical shape (from which the genus name, helicobacter, derives) is thought to have evolved in order to penetrate the mucoid lining of the stomach and thereby establish infection. The bacterium was first identified in 1982 by the Australian doctors Barry Marshall and Robin Warren. H. pylori has been associated with cancer of the mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue in the stomach, esophagus, colon, rectum, or tissues around the eye (termed extranodal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma of the cited organ), and of lymphoid tissue in the stomach (termed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma).
H. pylori infection usually has no symptoms but sometimes causes gastritis (stomach inflammation) or ulcers of the stomach or first part of the small intestine. The infection is also associated with the development of certain cancers. Many investigators have suggested that H. pylori causes or prevents a wide range of other diseases, but many of these relationships remain controversial.
Some studies suggest that H. pylori plays an important role in the natural stomach ecology, e.g. by influencing the type of bacteria that colonize the gastrointestinal tract. Other studies suggest that non-pathogenic strains of H. pylori may beneficially normalize stomach acid secretion, and regulate appetite.
In 2015, it was estimated that over 50% of the world's population had H. pylori in their upper gastrointestinal tracts with this infection (or colonization) being more common in developing countries. In recent decades, however, the prevalence of H. pylori colonization of the gastrointestinal tract has declined in many countries.
## Signs and symptoms
Up to 90% of people infected with H. pylori never experience symptoms or complications. However, individuals infected with H. pylori have a 10% to 20% lifetime risk of developing peptic ulcers. Acute infection may appear as an acute gastritis with abdominal pain (stomach ache) or nausea. Where this develops into chronic gastritis, the symptoms, if present, are often those of non-ulcer dyspepsia: Stomach pains, nausea, bloating, belching, and sometimes vomiting. Pain typically occurs when the stomach is empty, between meals, and in the early morning hours, but it can also occur at other times. Less common ulcer symptoms include nausea, vomiting, and loss of appetite.
Bleeding in the stomach can also occur as evidenced by the passage of black stools; prolonged bleeding may cause anemia leading to weakness and fatigue. If bleeding is heavy, hematemesis, hematochezia, or melena may occur. Inflammation of the pyloric antrum, which connects the stomach to the duodenum, is more likely to lead to duodenal ulcers, while inflammation of the corpus (i.e. body of the stomach) is more likely to lead to gastric ulcers. Individuals infected with H. pylori may also develop colorectal or gastric polyps, i.e. non-cancerous growths of tissue projecting from the mucous membranes of these organs. Usually, these polyps are asymptomatic but gastric polyps may be the cause of dyspepsia, heartburn, bleeding from the upper gastrointestinal tract, and, rarely, gastric outlet obstruction while colorectal polyps may be the cause of rectal bleeding, anemia, constipation, diarrhea, weight loss, and abdominal pain.
Individuals with chronic H. pylori infection have an increased risk of acquiring a cancer that is directly related to this infection. These cancers are stomach adenocarcinoma, less commonly diffuse large B-cell lymphoma of the stomach, or extranodal marginal zone B-cell lymphomas of the stomach, or, more rarely, of the colon, rectum, esophagus, or ocular adenexa (i.e. orbit, conjunctiva, and/or eyelids).
## Microbiology
### Morphology
Helicobacter pylori is a helix-shaped (classified as a curved rod, not spirochaete) Gram-negative bacterium about 3 μm long with a diameter of about 0.5 μm. H. pylori can be demonstrated in tissue by Gram stain, Giemsa stain, haematoxylin–eosin stain, Warthin-Starry silver stain, acridine orange stain, and phase-contrast microscopy. It is capable of forming biofilms and can convert from spiral to a possibly viable but nonculturable coccoid form.
Helicobacter pylori has four to six flagella at the same location; all gastric and enterohepatic Helicobacter species are highly motile owing to flagella. The characteristic sheathed flagellar filaments of Helicobacter are composed of two copolymerized flagellins, FlaA and FlaB.
### Physiology
Helicobacter pylori is microaerophilic – that is, it requires oxygen, but at lower concentration than in the atmosphere. It contains a hydrogenase that can produce energy by oxidizing molecular hydrogen (H<sub>2</sub>) made by intestinal bacteria. It produces oxidase, catalase, and urease.
H. pylori possesses five major outer membrane protein families. The largest family includes known and putative adhesins. The other four families are porins, iron transporters, flagellum-associated proteins, and proteins of unknown function. Like other typical Gram-negative bacteria, the outer membrane of H. pylori consists of phospholipids and lipopolysaccharide (LPS). The O antigen of LPS may be fucosylated and mimic Lewis blood group antigens found on the gastric epithelium. The outer membrane also contains cholesterol glucosides, which are present in few other bacteria.
### Genome
Helicobacter pylori consists of a large diversity of strains, and hundreds of genomes have been completely sequenced. The genome of the strain "26695" consists of about 1.7 million base pairs, with some 1,576 genes. The pan-genome, that is a combined set of 30 sequenced strains, encodes 2,239 protein families (orthologous groups, OGs). Among them, 1,248 OGs are conserved in all the 30 strains, and represent the universal core. The remaining 991 OGs correspond to the accessory genome in which 277 OGs are unique (i.e., OGs present in only one strain).
### Transcriptome
In 2010, Sharma et al. presented a comprehensive analysis of transcription at single-nucleotide resolution by differential RNA-seq that confirmed the known acid induction of major virulence loci, such as the urease (ure) operon or the cag pathogenicity island (see below). More importantly, this study identified a total of 1,907 transcriptional start sites, 337 primary operons, and 126 additional suboperons, and 66 monocistrons. Until 2010, only about 55 transcriptional start sites (TSSs) were known in this species. Notably, 27% of the primary TSSs are also antisense TSSs, indicating that – similar to E. coli – antisense transcription occurs across the entire H. pylori genome. At least one antisense TSS is associated with about 46% of all open reading frames, including many housekeeping genes. Most (about 50%) of the 5 UTRs are 20–40 nucleotides (nt) in length and support the AAGGag motif located about 6 nt (median distance) upstream of start codons as the consensus Shine–Dalgarno sequence in H. pylori.
#### Genes involved in virulence and pathogenesis
Study of the H. pylori genome is centered on attempts to understand pathogenesis, the ability of this organism to cause disease. About 29% of the loci have a colonization defect when mutated. Two of sequenced strains have an around 40 kb-long Cag pathogenicity island (a common gene sequence believed responsible for pathogenesis) that contains over 40 genes. This pathogenicity island is usually absent from H. pylori strains isolated from humans who are carriers of H. pylori, but remain asymptomatic.
The cagA gene codes for one of the major H. pylori virulence proteins. Bacterial strains with the cagA gene are associated with an ability to cause ulcers. The cagA gene codes for a relatively long (1186-amino acid) protein. The cag pathogenicity island (PAI) has about 30 genes, part of which code for a complex type IV secretion system. The low GC-content of the cag PAI relative to the rest of the Helicobacter genome suggests the island was acquired by horizontal transfer from another bacterial species. The serine protease HtrA also plays a major role in the pathogenesis of H. pylori. The HtrA protein enables the bacterium to transmigrate across the host cells' epithelium, and is also needed for the translocation of CagA.
The vacA () gene codes for another major H. pylori virulence protein. There are four main subtypes of vacA: s1/m1, s1/m2, s2/m1, and s2/m2. s1/m1 and s1/m2 subtypes are known to cause increased risk of gastric cancer. This has been linked to the ability for toxigenic vacA to promote the generation of intracellular reservoirs of H. pylori via disruption of calcium channel TRPML1.
### Proteome
The proteins of H. pylori have been systematically analyzed by multiple studies. As a consequence, more than 70% of its proteome have been detected by mass spectrometry and other biochemical methods. In fact, about 50% of the proteome have been quantified, that is, we know how many copies of each protein are present in a typical cell. Furthermore, the interactome of H. pylori has been systematically studied and more than 3000 protein-protein interactions have been identified. The latter provide information of how proteins interact with each other, e.g. in stable protein complexes or in more dynamic, transient interactions. This in turn helps researchers to find out what the function of uncharacterized proteins is, e.g. when an uncharacterized protein interacts with several proteins of the ribosome (that is, it is likely also involved in ribosome function). Nevertheless, about a third of all \~1,500 proteins in H. pylori remain uncharacterized and their function is largely unknown.
## Pathophysiology
### Adaptation to the stomach
To avoid the acidic environment of the interior of the stomach (lumen), H. pylori uses its flagella to burrow into the mucus lining of the stomach to reach the epithelial cells underneath, where it is less acidic. H. pylori is able to sense the pH gradient in the mucus and move towards the less acidic region (chemotaxis). This also keeps the bacteria from being swept away into the lumen with the bacteria's mucus environment, which is constantly moving from its site of creation at the epithelium to its dissolution at the lumen interface.
H. pylori is found in the mucus, on the inner surface of the epithelium, and occasionally inside the epithelial cells themselves. It adheres to the epithelial cells by producing adhesins, which bind to lipids and carbohydrates in the epithelial cell membrane. One such adhesin, BabA, binds to the Lewis b antigen displayed on the surface of stomach epithelial cells. H. pylori adherence via BabA is acid sensitive and can be fully reversed by decreased pH. It has been proposed that BabA's acid responsiveness enables adherence while also allowing an effective escape from unfavorable environment at pH that is harmful to the organism. Another such adhesin, SabA, binds to increased levels of sialyl-Lewis <sup>X</sup> (sLeX) antigen expressed on gastric mucosa.
In addition to using chemotaxis to avoid areas of low pH, H. pylori also neutralizes the acid in its environment by producing large amounts of urease, which breaks down the urea present in the stomach to carbon dioxide and ammonia. These react with the strong acids in the environment to produce a neutralized area around H. pylori. Urease knockout mutants are incapable of colonization. In fact, urease expression is not only required for establishing initial colonization but also for maintaining chronic infection.
#### Adaptation of H. pylori to high acidity of stomach
As mentioned above, H. pylori produce large amounts of urease to produce ammonia as one of its adaptation methods to overcome stomach acidity. Helicobacter pylori arginase, a bimetallic enzyme binuclear Mn2-metalloenzyme arginase, crucial for pathogenesis of the bacterium in human stomach, a member of the ureohydrolase family, catalyzes the conversion of L-arginine to L-ornithine and urea, where ornithine is further converted into polyamines, which are essential for various critical metabolic processes.
This provides acid resistance and is thus important for colonization of the bacterium in the gastric epithelial cells. Arginase of H. pylori also plays a role in evasion of the pathogen from the host immune system mainly by various proposed mechanisms, arginase competes with host-inducible nitric oxide (NO) synthase for the common substrate L-arginine, and thus reduces the synthesis of NO, an important component of innate immunity and an effective antimicrobial agent that is able to kill the invading pathogens directly.
Alterations in the availability of L-arginine and its metabolism into polyamines contribute significantly to the dysregulation of the host immune response to H. pylori infection.
### Inflammation, gastritis and ulcer
Helicobacter pylori harms the stomach and duodenal linings by several mechanisms. The ammonia produced to regulate pH is toxic to epithelial cells, as are biochemicals produced by H. pylori such as proteases, vacuolating cytotoxin A (VacA) (this damages epithelial cells, disrupts tight junctions and causes apoptosis), and certain phospholipases. Cytotoxin associated gene CagA can also cause inflammation and is potentially a carcinogen.
Colonization of the stomach by H. pylori can result in chronic gastritis, an inflammation of the stomach lining, at the site of infection. Helicobacter cysteine-rich proteins (Hcp), particularly HcpA (hp0211), are known to trigger an immune response, causing inflammation. H. pylori has been shown to increase the levels of COX2 in H. pylori positive gastritis. Chronic gastritis is likely to underlie H. pylori-related diseases.
Ulcers in the stomach and duodenum result when the consequences of inflammation allow stomach acid and the digestive enzyme pepsin to overwhelm the mechanisms that protect the stomach and duodenal mucous membranes. The location of colonization of H. pylori, which affects the location of the ulcer, depends on the acidity of the stomach. In people producing large amounts of acid, H. pylori colonizes near the pyloric antrum (exit to the duodenum) to avoid the acid-secreting parietal cells at the fundus (near the entrance to the stomach). G-cells express relatively high levels of PD-L1 that protects these cells from H. pylori-induced immune destruction. In people producing normal or reduced amounts of acid, H. pylori can also colonize the rest of the stomach.
The inflammatory response caused by bacteria colonizing near the pyloric antrum induces G cells in the antrum to secrete the hormone gastrin, which travels through the bloodstream to parietal cells in the fundus. Gastrin stimulates the parietal cells to secrete more acid into the stomach lumen, and over time increases the number of parietal cells, as well. The increased acid load damages the duodenum, which may eventually result in ulcers forming in the duodenum.
When H. pylori colonizes other areas of the stomach, the inflammatory response can result in atrophy of the stomach lining and eventually ulcers in the stomach. This also may increase the risk of stomach cancer.
### Cag pathogenicity island
The pathogenicity of H. pylori may be increased by genes of the cag pathogenicity island; about 50–70% of H. pylori strains in Western countries carry it. Western people infected with strains carrying the cag PAI have a stronger inflammatory response in the stomach and are at a greater risk of developing peptic ulcers or stomach cancer than those infected with strains lacking the island. Following attachment of H. pylori to stomach epithelial cells, the type IV secretion system expressed by the cag PAI "injects" the inflammation-inducing agent, peptidoglycan, from their own cell walls into the epithelial cells. The injected peptidoglycan is recognized by the cytoplasmic pattern recognition receptor (immune sensor) Nod1, which then stimulates expression of cytokines that promote inflammation.
The type-IV secretion apparatus also injects the cag PAI-encoded protein CagA into the stomach's epithelial cells, where it disrupts the cytoskeleton, adherence to adjacent cells, intracellular signaling, cell polarity, and other cellular activities. Once inside the cell, the CagA protein is phosphorylated on tyrosine residues by a host cell membrane-associated tyrosine kinase (TK). CagA then allosterically activates protein tyrosine phosphatase/protooncogene Shp2. Pathogenic strains of H. pylori have been shown to activate the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), a membrane protein with a TK domain. Activation of the EGFR by H. pylori is associated with altered signal transduction and gene expression in host epithelial cells that may contribute to pathogenesis. A C-terminal region of the CagA protein (amino acids 873–1002) has also been suggested to be able to regulate host cell gene transcription, independent of protein tyrosine phosphorylation. A great deal of diversity exists between strains of H. pylori, and the strain that infects a person can predict the outcome.
### Cancer
H. pylori is a major source of worldwide cancer mortality. Although the data varies between different countries, overall about 1% to 3% of people infected with Helicobacter pylori develop gastric cancer in their lifetime compared to 0.13% of individuals who have had no H. pylori infection. H. pylori infection is very prevalent. As evaluated in 2002, it is present in the gastric tissues of 74% of middle-aged adults in developing countries and 58% in developed countries. Since 1% to 3% of infected individuals are likely to develop gastric cancer, H. pylori-induced gastric cancer is the third highest cause of worldwide cancer mortality as of 2018.
Infection by H. pylori causes no symptoms in about 80% of those infected. About 75% of individuals infected with H. pylori develop gastritis. Thus, the usual consequence of H. pylori infection is chronic asymptomatic gastritis. Because of the usual lack of symptoms, when gastric cancer is finally diagnosed it is often fairly advanced. More than half of gastric cancer patients have lymph node metastasis when they are initially diagnosed.
The gastritis caused by H. pylori is accompanied by inflammation, characterized by infiltration of neutrophils and macrophages to the gastric epithelium, which favors the accumulation of pro-inflammatory cytokines and reactive oxygen species/reactive nitrogen species (ROS/RNS). The substantial presence of ROS/RNS causes DNA damage including 8-oxo-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG). If the infecting H. pylori carry the cytotoxic cagA gene (present in about 60% of Western isolates and a higher percentage of Asian isolates), they can increase the level of 8-OHdG in gastric cells by 8-fold, while if the H. pylori do not carry the cagA gene, the increase in 8-OHdG is about 4-fold. In addition to the oxidative DNA damage 8-OHdG, H. pylori infection causes other characteristic DNA damages including DNA double-strand breaks.
H. pylori also causes many epigenetic alterations linked to cancer development. These epigenetic alterations are due to H. pylori-induced methylation of CpG sites in promoters of genes and H. pylori-induced altered expression of multiple microRNAs.
As reviewed by Santos and Ribeiro H. pylori infection is associated with epigenetically reduced efficiency of the DNA repair machinery, which favors the accumulation of mutations and genomic instability as well as gastric carcinogenesis. In particular, Raza et al. showed that expression of two DNA repair proteins, ERCC1 and PMS2, was severely reduced once H. pylori infection had progressed to cause dyspepsia. Dyspepsia occurs in about 20% of infected individuals. In addition, as reviewed by Raza et al., human gastric infection with H. pylori causes epigenetically reduced protein expression of DNA repair proteins MLH1, MGMT and MRE11. Reduced DNA repair in the presence of increased DNA damage increases carcinogenic mutations and is likely a significant cause of H. pylori carcinogenesis.
Two related mechanisms by which H. pylori could promote cancer are under investigation. One mechanism involves the enhanced production of free radicals near H. pylori and an increased rate of host cell mutation. The other proposed mechanism has been called a "perigenetic pathway", and involves enhancement of the transformed host cell phenotype by means of alterations in cell proteins, such as adhesion proteins. H. pylori has been proposed to induce inflammation and locally high levels of TNF-α and/or interleukin 6 (IL-6). According to the proposed perigenetic mechanism, inflammation-associated signaling molecules, such as TNF-α, can alter gastric epithelial cell adhesion and lead to the dispersion and migration of mutated epithelial cells without the need for additional mutations in tumor suppressor genes, such as genes that code for cell adhesion proteins.
The strain of H. pylori a person is exposed to may influence the risk of developing gastric cancer. Strains of H. pylori that produce high levels of two proteins, vacuolating toxin A (VacA) and the cytotoxin-associated gene A (CagA), appear to cause greater tissue damage than those that produce lower levels or that lack those genes completely. These proteins are directly toxic to cells lining the stomach and signal strongly to the immune system that an invasion is under way. As a result of the bacterial presence, neutrophils and macrophages set up residence in the tissue to fight the bacteria assault.
### Survival of Helicobacter pylori
The pathogenesis of H. pylori depends on its ability to survive in the harsh gastric environment characterized by acidity, peristalsis, and attack by phagocytes accompanied by release of reactive oxygen species. In particular, H. pylori elicits an oxidative stress response during host colonization. This oxidative stress response induces potentially lethal and mutagenic oxidative DNA adducts in the H. pylori genome.
Vulnerability to oxidative stress and oxidative DNA damage occurs commonly in many studied bacterial pathogens, including Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Hemophilus influenzae, Streptococcus pneumoniae, S. mutans, and H. pylori. For each of these pathogens, surviving the DNA damage induced by oxidative stress appears supported by transformation-mediated recombinational repair. Thus, transformation and recombinational repair appear to contribute to successful infection.
Transformation (the transfer of DNA from one bacterial cell to another through the intervening medium) appears to be part of an adaptation for DNA repair. H. pylori is naturally competent for transformation. While many organisms are competent only under certain environmental conditions, such as starvation, H. pylori is competent throughout logarithmic growth. All organisms encode genetic programs for response to stressful conditions including those that cause DNA damage. In H. pylori, homologous recombination is required for repairing DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). The AddAB helicase-nuclease complex resects DSBs and loads RecA onto single-strand DNA (ssDNA), which then mediates strand exchange, leading to homologous recombination and repair. The requirement of RecA plus AddAB for efficient gastric colonization suggests, in the stomach, H. pylori is either exposed to double-strand DNA damage that must be repaired or requires some other recombination-mediated event. In particular, natural transformation is increased by DNA damage in H. pylori, and a connection exists between the DNA damage response and DNA uptake in H. pylori, suggesting natural competence contributes to persistence of H. pylori in its human host and explains the retention of competence in most clinical isolates.
RuvC protein is essential to the process of recombinational repair, since it resolves intermediates in this process termed Holliday junctions. H. pylori mutants that are defective in RuvC have increased sensitivity to DNA-damaging agents and to oxidative stress, exhibit reduced survival within macrophages, and are unable to establish successful infection in a mouse model. Similarly, RecN protein plays an important role in DSB repair in H. pylori. An H. pylori recN mutant displays an attenuated ability to colonize mouse stomachs, highlighting the importance of recombinational DNA repair in survival of H. pylori within its host.
## Diagnosis
Colonization with H. pylori is not a disease in itself, but a condition associated with a number of disorders of the upper gastrointestinal tract. Testing is recommended if peptic ulcer disease or low-grade gastric MALT lymphoma (MALToma) is present, after endoscopic resection of early gastric cancer, for first-degree relatives with gastric cancer, and in certain cases of dyspepsia. Several methods of testing exist, including invasive and noninvasive testing methods.
Noninvasive tests for H. pylori infection may be suitable and include blood antibody tests, stool antigen tests, or the carbon urea breath test (in which the patient drinks <sup>14</sup>C – or <sup>13</sup>C-labelled urea, which the bacterium metabolizes, producing labelled carbon dioxide that can be detected in the breath). It is not known for sure which non-invasive test is more accurate for diagnosing a H. pylori infection but indirect comparison puts urea breath test as a higher accuracy than others. However, after an eradication therapy an immune test will still be positive. Therefore a breath test is used for therapy control.
An endoscopic biopsy is an invasive means to test for H. pylori infection. Low-level infections can be missed by biopsy, so multiple samples are recommended. The most accurate method for detecting H. pylori infection is with a histological examination from two sites after endoscopic biopsy, combined with either a rapid urease test or microbial culture.
## Transmission
Helicobacter pylori is contagious, although the exact route of transmission is idiopathic. Person-to-person transmission by either the oral–oral (kissing, mouth feeding) or fecal–oral route is most likely. Consistent with these transmission routes, the bacteria have been isolated from feces, saliva, and dental plaque of some infected people. Findings suggest H. pylori is more easily transmitted by gastric mucus than saliva. Transmission occurs mainly within families in developed nations, yet can also be acquired from the community in developing countries. H. pylori may also be transmitted orally by means of fecal matter through the ingestion of waste-tainted water, so a hygienic environment could help decrease the risk of H. pylori infection.
## Prevention
Due to H. pylori's role as a major cause of certain diseases (particularly cancers) and its consistently increasing antibiotic resistance, there is a clear need for new therapeutic strategies to prevent or remove the bacterium from colonizing humans. Much work has been done on developing viable vaccines aimed at providing an alternative strategy to control H. pylori infection and related diseases. Researchers are studying different adjuvants, antigens, and routes of immunization to ascertain the most appropriate system of immune protection; however, most of the research only recently moved from animal to human trials. An economic evaluation of the use of a potential H. pylori vaccine in babies found its introduction could, at least in the Netherlands, prove cost-effective for the prevention of peptic ulcer and stomach adenocarcinoma. A similar approach has also been studied for the United States. Notwithstanding this proof-of-concept (i.e. vaccination protects children from acquisition of infection with H. pylori), as of late 2019 there have been no advanced vaccine candidates and only one vaccine in a Phase I clinical trial. Furthermore, development of a vaccine against H. pylori has not been a current priority of major pharmaceutical companies.
Many investigations have attempted to prevent the development of Helicobacter pylori-related diseases by eradicating the bacterium during the early stages of its infestation using antibiotic-based drug regimens. Studies find that such treatments, when effectively eradicating H. pylori from the stomach, reduce the inflammation and some of the histopathological abnormalities associated with the infestation. However studies disagree on the ability of these treatments to alleviate the more serious histopathological abnormalities in H. pylori infections, e.g. gastric atrophy and metaplasia, both of which are precursors to gastric adenocarcinoma. There is similar disagreement on the ability of antibiotic-based regiments to prevent gastric adenocarcinoma. A meta-analysis (i.e. a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple randomized controlled trials) published in 2014 found that these regimens did not appear to prevent development of this adenocarcinoma. However, two subsequent prospective cohort studies conducted on high-risk individuals in China and Taiwan found that eradication of the bacterium produced a significant decrease in the number of individuals developing the disease. These results agreed with a retrospective cohort study done in Japan and published in 2016 as well as a meta-analysis, also published in 2016, of 24 studies conducted on individuals with varying levels of risk for developing the disease. These more recent studies suggest that the eradication of H. pylori infection reduces the incidence of H. pylori-related gastric adenocarcinoma in individuals at all levels of baseline risk. Further studies will be required to clarify this issue. In all events, studies agree that antibiotic-based regimens effectively reduce the occurrence of metachronous H. pylori-associated gastric adenocarcinoma. (Metachronous cancers are cancers that reoccur 6 months or later after resection of the original cancer.) It is suggested that antibiotic-based drug regimens be used after resecting H. pylori-associated gastric adenocarcinoma in order to reduce its metachronus reoccurrence.
## Treatment
### Gastritis
Superficial gastritis, either acute or chronic, is the most common manifestation of H. pylori infection. The signs and symptoms of this gastritis have been found to remit spontaneously in many individuals without resorting to Helicobacter pylori eradication protocols. The H. pylori bacterial infection persists after remission in these cases. Various antibiotic plus proton pump inhibitor drug regimens are used to eradicate the bacterium and thereby successfully treat the disorder with triple-drug therapy consisting of clarithromycin, amoxicillin, and a proton-pump inhibitor given for 14–21 days often being considered first line treatment.
### Peptic ulcers
Once H. pylori is detected in a person with a peptic ulcer, the normal procedure is to eradicate it and allow the ulcer to heal. The standard first-line therapy is a one-week "triple therapy" consisting of acid-suppressive therapy, most commonly proton-pump inhibitors, such as omeprazole, or potassium-competitive acid blockers, such as vonoprazan, combined with the antibiotics clarithromycin and amoxicillin. (The actions of proton pump inhibitors against H. pylori may reflect their direct bacteriostatic effect due to inhibition of the bacterium's P-type ATPase and/or urease.) Variations of the triple therapy have been developed over the years, such as using a different proton pump inhibitor, as with pantoprazole or rabeprazole, or replacing amoxicillin with metronidazole for people who are allergic to penicillin. In areas with higher rates of clarithromycin resistance, other options are recommended. Such a therapy has revolutionized the treatment of peptic ulcers and has made a cure to the disease possible. Previously, the only option was symptom control using antacids, H<sub>2</sub>-antagonists or proton pump inhibitors alone.
#### Antibiotic-resistant disease
An increasing number of infected individuals are found to harbor antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This results in initial treatment failure and requires additional rounds of antibiotic therapy or alternative strategies, such as a quadruple therapy, which adds a bismuth colloid, such as bismuth subsalicylate. In patients with any previous macrolide exposure or who are allergic to penicillin, a quadruple therapy that consisting of a proton pump inhibitor, bismuth, tetracycline, and a nitroimidazole for 10–14 days is a recommended first-line treatment option. For the treatment of clarithromycin-resistant strains of H. pylori, the use of levofloxacin as part of the therapy has been suggested.
Ingesting lactic acid bacteria exerts a suppressive effect on H. pylori infection in both animals and humans, and supplementing with Lactobacillus- and Bifidobacterium-containing yogurt improved the rates of eradication of H. pylori in humans. Symbiotic butyrate-producing bacteria which are normally present in the intestine are sometimes used as probiotics to help suppress H. pylori infections as an adjunct to antibiotic therapy. Butyrate itself is an antimicrobial which destroys the cell envelope of H. pylori by inducing regulatory T cell expression (specifically, FOXP3) and synthesis of an antimicrobial peptide called LL-37, which arises through its action as a histone deacetylase inhibitor.
The substance sulforaphane, which occurs in broccoli and cauliflower, has been proposed as a treatment. Periodontal therapy or scaling and root planing has also been suggested as an additional treatment.
### Cancers
#### Extranodal marginal zone B-cell lymphomas
Extranodal marginal zone B-cell lymphomas (also termed MALT lymphomas) are generally indolent malignancies. Recommended treatment of H. pylori-positive extranodal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma of the stomach, when localized (i.e. Ann Arbor stage I and II), employs one of the antibiotic-proton pump inhibitor regiments listed in the H. pylori eradication protocols. If the initial regimen fails to eradicate the pathogen, patients are treated with an alternate protocol. Eradication of the pathogen is successful in 70–95% of cases. Some 50-80% of patients who experience eradication of the pathogen develop within 3–28 months a remission and long-term clinical control of their lymphoma. Radiation therapy to the stomach and surrounding (i.e. peri-gastric) lymph nodes has also been used to successfully treat these localized cases. Patients with non-localized (i.e. systemic Ann Arbor stage III and IV) disease who are free of symptoms have been treated with watchful waiting or, if symptomatic, with the immunotherapy drug, rituximab, (given for 4 weeks) combined with the chemotherapy drug, chlorambucil, for 6–12 months; 58% of these patients attain a 58% progression-free survival rate at 5 years. Frail stage III/IV patients have been successfully treated with rituximab or the chemotherapy drug, cyclophosphamide, alone. Only rare cases of H. pylori-positive extranodal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma of the colon have been successfully treated with an antibiotic-proton pump inhibitor regimen; the currently recommended treatments for this disease are surgical resection, endoscopic resection, radiation, chemotherapy, or, more recently, rituximab. In the few reported cases of H. pylori-positive extranodal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma of the esophagus, localized disease has been successfully treated with antibiotic-proton pump inhibitor regimens; however, advanced disease appears less responsive or unresponsive to these regimens but partially responsive to rituximab. Antibiotic-proton pump inhibitor eradication therapy and localized radiation therapy have been used successfully to treat H. pylori-positive extranodal marginal zone B-cell lymphomas of the rectum; however radiation therapy has given slightly better results and therefore been suggested to be the disease' preferred treatment. The treatment of localized H. pylori-positive extranodal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma of the ocular adenexa with antibiotic/proton pump inhibitor regimens has achieved 2 year and 5 year failure-free survival rates of 67% and 55%, respectively, and a 5-year progression-free rate of 61%. However, the generally recognized treatment of choice for patients with systemic involvement uses various chemotherapy drugs often combined with rituximab.
#### Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma
Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma is a far more aggressive cancer than extranodal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma. Cases of this malignancy that are H. pylori-positive may be derived from the latter lymphoma and are less aggressive as well as more susceptible to treatment than H. pylori negative cases. Several recent studies strongly suggest that localized, early-stage diffuse Helicobacter pylori positive diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, when limited to the stomach, can be successfully treated with antibiotic-proton pump inhibitor regimens. However, these studies also agree that, given the aggressiveness of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, patients treated with one of these H. pylori eradication regimes need to be carefully followed. If found unresponsive to or clinically worsening on these regimens, these patients should be switched to more conventional therapy such as chemotherapy (e.g. CHOP or a CHOP-like regimen), immunotherapy (e.g. rituximab), surgery, and/or local radiotherapy. H. pylori positive diffuse large B-cell lymphoma has been successfully treated with one or a combination of these methods.
#### Stomach adenocarcinoma
Helicobacter pylori is linked to the majority of gastric adenocarcinoma cases, particularly those that are located outside of the stomach's cardia (i.e. esophagus-stomach junction). The treatment for this cancer is highly aggressive with even localized disease being treated sequentially with chemotherapy and radiotherapy before surgical resection. Since this cancer, once developed, is independent of H. pylori infection, antibiotic-proton pump inhibitor regimens are not used in its treatment.
## Prognosis
Helicobacter pylori colonizes the stomach and induces chronic gastritis, a long-lasting inflammation of the stomach. The bacterium persists in the stomach for decades in most people. Most individuals infected by H. pylori never experience clinical symptoms, despite having chronic gastritis. About 10–20% of those colonized by H. pylori ultimately develop gastric and duodenal ulcers. H. pylori infection is also associated with a 1–2% lifetime risk of stomach cancer and a less than 1% risk of gastric MALT lymphoma.
In the absence of treatment, H. pylori infection – once established in its gastric niche – is widely believed to persist for life. In the elderly, however, infection likely can disappear as the stomach's mucosa becomes increasingly atrophic and inhospitable to colonization. The proportion of acute infections that persist is not known, but several studies that followed the natural history in populations have reported apparent spontaneous elimination.
It is possible for H. pylori to re-establish in a person after eradication. This recurrence can be caused by the original strain (recrudescence), or be caused by a different strain (reinfection). According to a 2017 meta-analysis by Hu et al., the global per-person annual rates of recurrence, reinfection, and recrudescence is 4.3%, 3.1%, and 2.2% respectively. It is unclear what the main risk factors are.
Mounting evidence suggests H. pylori has an important role in protection from some diseases. The incidence of acid reflux disease, Barrett's esophagus, and esophageal cancer have been rising dramatically at the same time as H. pylori's presence decreases. In 1996, Martin J. Blaser advanced the hypothesis that H. pylori has a beneficial effect by regulating the acidity of the stomach contents. The hypothesis is not universally accepted as several randomized controlled trials failed to demonstrate worsening of acid reflux disease symptoms following eradication of H. pylori. Nevertheless, Blaser has reasserted his view that H. pylori is a member of the normal flora of the stomach. He postulates that the changes in gastric physiology caused by the loss of H. pylori account for the recent increase in incidence of several diseases, including type 2 diabetes, obesity, and asthma. His group has recently shown that H. pylori colonization is associated with a lower incidence of childhood asthma.
## Epidemiology
As of 1995 at least half the world's population was infected by the bacterium, making it the most widespread infection in the world. Actual infection rates vary from nation to nation; the developing world has much higher infection rates than the developed one, notably Western Europe, North America, and Australasia. The global prevalence of the bacterium declined markedly in the decade following 2010, with a particular reduction in Africa.
The age when someone acquires this bacterium seems to influence the pathologic outcome of the infection. People infected at an early age are likely to develop more intense inflammation that may be followed by atrophic gastritis with a higher subsequent risk of gastric ulcer, gastric cancer, or both. Acquisition at an older age brings different gastric changes more likely to lead to duodenal ulcer. Infections are usually acquired in early childhood in all countries. However, the infection rate of children in developing nations is higher than in industrialized nations, probably due to poor sanitary conditions, perhaps combined with lower antibiotics usage for unrelated pathologies. In developed nations, it is currently uncommon to find infected children, but the percentage of infected people increases with age, with about 50% infected for those over the age of 60 compared with around 10% between 18 and 30 years. The higher prevalence among the elderly reflects higher infection rates in the past when the individuals were children rather than more recent infection at a later age of the individual. In the United States, prevalence appears higher in African-American and Hispanic populations, most likely due to socioeconomic factors. The lower rate of infection in the West is largely attributed to higher hygiene standards and widespread use of antibiotics. Despite high rates of infection in certain areas of the world, the overall frequency of H. pylori infection is declining. However, antibiotic resistance is appearing in H. pylori; many metronidazole- and clarithromycin-resistant strains are found in most parts of the world.
## History
Helicobacter pylori migrated out of Africa along with its human host circa 60,000 years ago. Recent research states that genetic diversity in H. pylori, like that of its host, decreases with geographic distance from East Africa. Using the genetic diversity data, researchers have created simulations that indicate the bacteria seem to have spread from East Africa around 58,000 years ago. Their results indicate modern humans were already infected by H. pylori before their migrations out of Africa, and it has remained associated with human hosts since that time.
H. pylori was first discovered in the stomachs of patients with gastritis and ulcers in 1982 by Drs. Barry Marshall and Robin Warren of Perth, Western Australia. At the time, the conventional thinking was that no bacterium could live in the acid environment of the human stomach. In recognition of their discovery, Marshall and Warren were awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Before the research of Marshall and Warren, German scientists found spiral-shaped bacteria in the lining of the human stomach in 1875, but they were unable to culture them, and the results were eventually forgotten. The Italian researcher Giulio Bizzozero described similarly shaped bacteria living in the acidic environment of the stomach of dogs in 1893. Professor Walery Jaworski of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków investigated sediments of gastric washings obtained by lavage from humans in 1899. Among some rod-like bacteria, he also found bacteria with a characteristic spiral shape, which he called Vibrio rugula. He was the first to suggest a possible role of this organism in the pathogenesis of gastric diseases. His work was included in the Handbook of Gastric Diseases, but it had little impact, as it was written in Polish. Several small studies conducted in the early 20th century demonstrated the presence of curved rods in the stomachs of many people with peptic ulcers and stomach cancers. Interest in the bacteria waned, however, when an American study published in 1954 failed to observe the bacteria in 1180 stomach biopsies.
Interest in understanding the role of bacteria in stomach diseases was rekindled in the 1970s, with the visualization of bacteria in the stomachs of people with gastric ulcers. The bacteria had also been observed in 1979, by Robin Warren, who researched it further with Barry Marshall from 1981. After unsuccessful attempts at culturing the bacteria from the stomach, they finally succeeded in visualizing colonies in 1982, when they unintentionally left their Petri dishes incubating for five days over the Easter weekend. In their original paper, Warren and Marshall contended that most stomach ulcers and gastritis were caused by bacterial infection and not by stress or spicy food, as had been assumed before.
Some skepticism was expressed initially, but within a few years multiple research groups had verified the association of H. pylori with gastritis and, to a lesser extent, ulcers. To demonstrate H. pylori caused gastritis and was not merely a bystander, Marshall drank a beaker of H. pylori culture. He became ill with nausea and vomiting several days later. An endoscopy 10 days after inoculation revealed signs of gastritis and the presence of H. pylori. These results suggested H. pylori was the causative agent. Marshall and Warren went on to demonstrate antibiotics are effective in the treatment of many cases of gastritis. In 1994, the National Institutes of Health stated most recurrent duodenal and gastric ulcers were caused by H. pylori, and recommended antibiotics be included in the treatment regimen.
The bacterium was initially named Campylobacter pyloridis, then renamed C. pylori in 1987 (pylori being the genitive of pylorus, the circular opening leading from the stomach into the duodenum, from the Ancient Greek word πυλωρός, which means gatekeeper). When 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing and other research showed in 1989 that the bacterium did not belong in the genus Campylobacter, it was placed in its own genus, Helicobacter from the ancient Greek έλιξ (hělix) "spiral" or "coil".
In October 1987, a group of experts met in Copenhagen to found the European Helicobacter Study Group (EHSG), an international multidisciplinary research group and the only institution focused on H. pylori. The Group is involved with the Annual International Workshop on Helicobacter and Related Bacteria, the Maastricht Consensus Reports (European Consensus on the management of H. pylori), and other educational and research projects, including two international long-term projects:
- European Registry on H. pylori Management (Hp-EuReg) – a database systematically registering the routine clinical practice of European gastroenterologists.
- Optimal H. pylori management in primary care (OptiCare) – a long-term educational project aiming to disseminate the evidence based recommendations of the Maastricht IV Consensus to primary care physicians in Europe, funded by an educational grant from United European Gastroenterology.
## Research
Results from in vitro studies suggest that fatty acids, mainly polyunsaturated fatty acids, have a bactericidal effect against H. pylori, but their in vivo effects have not been proven.
## See also
- List of oncogenic bacteria
- Infectious causes of cancer
## Explanatory footnotes
|
1,055,633 |
Latter Days
| 1,165,199,853 |
2003 film by C. Jay Cox
|
[
"2000s American films",
"2000s English-language films",
"2003 LGBT-related films",
"2003 films",
"2003 independent films",
"2003 romantic comedy-drama films",
"American LGBT-related films",
"American independent films",
"American romantic comedy-drama films",
"Criticism of Mormonism",
"Films about LGBT and Christianity",
"Films about Mormonism",
"Films set in Los Angeles",
"Films shot in Los Angeles",
"Gay-related films",
"HIV/AIDS in American films",
"LGBT and Mormonism",
"LGBT-related romantic comedy-drama films",
"LGBT-related romantic drama films",
"Mormonism in fiction",
"Works about Mormon missionaries"
] |
Latter Days is a 2003 American romantic comedy-drama film about a gay relationship between a closeted Mormon missionary and his openly gay neighbor. The film was written and directed by C. Jay Cox and stars Steve Sandvoss as the missionary, Aaron, and Wes Ramsey as the neighbor, Christian. Joseph Gordon-Levitt appears as Elder Ryder, and Rebekah Johnson as Julie Taylor. Mary Kay Place, Khary Payton, Erik Palladino, Amber Benson, and Jacqueline Bisset have supporting roles.
Latter Days premiered at the Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival on July 10, 2003 and was released in various states of USA over the next 12 months. Later the film was released in a few other countries and shown at several gay film festivals. It was the first film to portray openly the clash between the principles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and homosexuality, and its exhibition in some U.S. states was controversial. Various religious groups demanded that the film be withdrawn from theaters and video stores under boycott threats.
The film was met with mixed reactions from film critics, but was popular with most film festival attendees. At the North American box office however, Latter Days only made \$834,685, barely covering the production's costs with an estimated budget of \$850,000. In 2004, freelance writer T. Fabris made Latter Days into a novel, which was published by Alyson Publications.
## Plot
Elder Aaron Davis, a young Mormon from Pocatello, Idaho, is sent to Los Angeles with three other missionaries to spread the faith. They move into an apartment next to openly gay party boy Christian Markelli and his roommate Julie, an aspiring singer. Christian and Julie work as waiters at Lila's, a trendy restaurant owned by retired actress Lila Montagne.
Christian makes a bet with his co-workers that he can seduce one of the Mormons, and soon comes to believe that Aaron, the least experienced missionary, is a closeted homosexual. Aaron and Christian become acquainted through several encounters in the apartment complex. When Christian accidentally injures himself, Aaron helps him indoors and cleans his wound. Christian attempts to seduce Aaron, but the hesitant Mormon becomes upset by Christian's remark that sex "doesn't have to mean anything". Aaron accuses him of being shallow and walks out. Worried that Aaron is correct, Christian joins a charity, delivering meals to people with AIDS. He gains new insights through a friendship with one of the beneficiaries. Aaron meets and befriends Lila, whose life partner has died, unaware of her connection to Christian.
Aaron's fellow missionary, Paul Ryder, has a cycling accident. Returning to his apartment, a distraught Aaron encounters Christian, who tries to comfort him with a hug. Both men are overwhelmed by their feelings and end up kissing, failing to notice the return of Aaron's roommates. Aaron is sent home in disgrace, leading Christian to confront Ryder, who is angry that Christian corrupted Aaron for no reason. Christian admits that he initially just wanted to win a bet, but says "it's not about that" anymore. Seeing Christian's distress, Ryder tells him that Aaron's flight has a five-hour layover in Salt Lake City.
Christian finds Aaron standing outside the airport terminal. Christian confesses his love, and despite his misgivings, Aaron admits his own feelings of love. With all flights canceled due to a snowstorm, Christian and Aaron spend an intimate night in a motel. When Christian awakes, he finds Aaron gone. Aaron's pocket watch, a family heirloom, has been left behind. Christian returns to Los Angeles. In Idaho, Aaron is excommunicated by the church elders, led by his father, who is the stake president. Aaron is rejected by his father and scolded by his mother, who tells him that he must pray for forgiveness. When Aaron suggests that he might be gay, his mother slaps him. Overwhelmed by despair, Aaron attempts suicide. His parents send him to a treatment facility in an attempt to change his sexual orientation via conversion therapy.
Christian locates Aaron's home address and phone number. Aaron's mother informs him that, "Thanks to you, my son took a razor to his wrists; thanks to you I have lost my son." Believing Aaron is dead, Christian spends the next few days thinking continually about Aaron. Christian travels to the Davis home in Idaho, where he tearfully returns Aaron's watch to his mother. After looking at the watch's inscription, which mentions charity, she tries to go after Christian, but he has already left.
Julie writes a song based on Christian's journal entry about the ordeal. Julie shows Christian her video for the song, and he is upset that Julie used his writings without his consent. Julie tells Christian that she hoped something good would come from it. In the treatment facility, Aaron hears Julie's song when her video airs on television. The video prompts Aaron to return to Los Angeles in search of Christian. When a stranger answers the door to Christian's apartment, Aaron is heartbroken, thinking that Christian has returned to his party boy ways and moved on. Having nowhere else to go, Aaron makes his way to Lila's restaurant and begins to recount his journey to her. Christian walks into the dining room, and is overjoyed to see Aaron alive. They reconcile and later celebrate Thanksgiving with Christian's co-workers. Lila tells everyone that, no matter what, they will always have, "a place at my table, and a place in my heart".
## Cast
- Steve Sandvoss as Elder Aaron Davis, a young Latter-day Saint from Pocatello, Idaho, who falls in love with Christian and must choose between his sexuality and his church. The producers auditioned a large number of people before casting Sandvoss, saying he "blew us away."
- Wes Ramsey as Christian William Markelli, an LA party boy aspiring to be an actor, Christian has his ideas of happiness and the meaning of life challenged when he falls for the simple but kind-hearted Aaron. Ramsey said on the DVD Special featurette, "The character of Christian was on so many levels intriguing to me. I was just so excited and feel very blessed to have the opportunity to tell that story through his eyes."
- Rebekah Johnson as Julie Taylor, Christian's roommate who tries to break out into the music world and on the way stop Christian from falling apart.
- Jacqueline Bisset as Lila Montagne, the owner of Lila's, a restaurant where Christian, Traci, Julie, and Andrew work. Her lover is terminally ill in hospital, but she still finds time to support Christian and Aaron with her witty and sarcastic advice. Bisset herself said, "I like humor, so I just, I really enjoyed doing all the cracks."
- Amber Benson as Traci Levine; Traci has moved from New York to LA to become an actress and works at Lila's to support herself. Traci does not like living in LA, but later admits she did not like New York much either.
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Elder Paul Ryder, a prickly, judgmental young missionary assigned as Aaron's partner, Ryder is not enthusiastic about being in LA and even less so about living next door to a homosexual. Gordon-Levitt originally auditioned to play Aaron, but his aggressive attitude toward the script but good sense of humor made the producers decide he was a perfect Ryder.
- Khary Payton as Andrew, an aspiring actor, but one who spends more time at Lila's gossiping and telling racy anecdotes. Andrew has been HIV positive for quite some time, but remains in good health.
- Rob McElhenney as Elder Harmon, the oldest of the L.D.S. missionaries who has been assigned as their leader.
- Dave Power as Elder Gilford, Harmon's missionary partner.
- Erik Palladino as Keith Griffin, a gay man dying of AIDS, drowning in his own bitterness and despair until befriended by Christian. Cox said that Palladino's performance was not how he originally envisioned it, but he could not now imagine a different person playing Keith.
- Mary Kay Place as Sister Gladys Davis, Aaron's deeply religious mother, who, despite showing unconditional love and affection toward Aaron before he leaves for Los Angeles, cannot accept the fact that her son is gay.
- Jim Ortlieb as Elder Farron Davis, Aaron's father, who serves as a Latter-day Saint Stake President in Pocatello, excommunicates Aaron from the church upon learning that he is gay. Farron is portrayed as a distant, evasive individual.
- Linda Pine as Susan Davis, the only Davis who accepts her brother's homosexuality. In a deleted scene, she tells Aaron that his homosexuality has changed nothing between them. She also discovers Aaron's suicide attempt, and in a panic, is able to save him just in time.
## Themes
Cox has stated that the film is primarily about a love story between two characters. There is also an exploration of religious attitudes towards homosexuality, and the dilemma of religious homosexuals, torn between who they are and what they believe. A non-fiction film with similar themes that has been contrasted with Latter Days is Trembling Before G-d.
Cox has also said that there is a massive irony, both in the film and in real life, that a religion so focused on the family and its importance is ripping families apart through its teaching on homosexuality. In fact, Cox believes one cannot be Mormon and gay. Nevertheless, a major theme of Latter Days is that there is an underlying spirituality in the world that goes beyond the rituals and dogmas of religion.
## Production
Latter Days was written and directed by C. Jay Cox after the success of his previous screenplay, Sweet Home Alabama, gave him the financial resources and critical credit to write a more personal love story. Cox based both characters – Christian and Aaron – on himself. He was raised as a Mormon and served a mission before coming out as gay, and had wondered what the two halves of himself would have said to each other if they had ever met. Latter Days was filmed in several locations in Los Angeles in 24 days on an estimated \$850,000 budget. After Cox had financed the search for initial backing, funding was acquired from private investors who wanted to see the film made. However producer Kirkland Tibbels still faced several bottlenecks, as financing the whole film remained difficult. It was distributed through TLA Releasing, an independent film distributor, who picked it up through its partnership with production company Funny Boy Films, which specializes in gay-themed media.
Despite coming from a Mormon background, Cox had to research details of the excommunication tribunal, which is held after Aaron is sent back to Idaho. Former Mormons told him about their experiences and provided Cox with "a pretty accurate representation, right down to the folding tables." According to Cox experienced actress Jacqueline Bisset also added valuable suggestions for improvements to the story.
Casting for the two main characters did not focus on their sexuality, but their ability "to show vulnerability". In a behind-the-scenes commentary, Steve Sandvoss explains that he did not want to play his character as a gay character, and Wes Ramsey emphasizes that the love story aspect of the film to him was detached from the character's gender. Due to several nude and kissing scenes, Latter Days was released unrated.
## Release
Latter Days premiered at the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival on July 10, 2003. The audience enjoyed the film so much that they gave it a standing ovation. When the cast came on stage, they received another standing ovation. The film had a similar reception both at OutFest a week later, and at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. The film also screened at the Seattle and Washington film festivals before being released across the United States over the following 12 months. Later the film was released in several other countries and shown at numerous gay film festivals, namely in Barcelona and Madrid (where it was also a popular pick) and Mexico City. Since its initial release it had received nine best film awards, as Cox mentioned in 2005 on a featurette included on the UK DVD.
The film was banned by Madstone Theaters, an arthouse cinema chain with nine theaters across the country, which claimed it was "not up to [our] artistic quality." The company was pressured with threatened boycotts and protests by conservative groups to withdraw their planned release. At the North American box office, Latter Days made \$834,685 from a maximum of 19 theaters. As of January 2011, the film is the top-grossing film from its distributor TLA Releasing.
## Reception
### Critical response
Critics' reviews have been mixed; film review website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 45% of critics gave the film positive write-ups, based upon a sample of 44 reviews, with an average score of 5.4/10. Frank Scheck, reviewer for The Hollywood Reporter, wrote: "Cox's screenplay, while occasionally lapsing into the sort of clichés endemic to so many gay-themed films, generally treats its unusual subject matter with dignity and complexity." Film critic Roger Ebert gave it two and a half stars out of four, declaring that the script was peopled from the "Stock Characters Store" and "the movie could have been (a) a gay love story, or (b) an attack on the Mormon Church, but is an awkward fit by trying to be (c) both at the same time". Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune commented "this movie is often as kitschy and artificial as ... 'Sweet Home Alabama'", another film written by Cox.
Other reviewers were more favourable, such as Toronto Sun critic Liz Braun, who said Latter Days was "the most important gay male movie of the past few years." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times commented: "At once romantic, earthy and socially critical, Latter Days is a dynamic film filled with humor and pathos." Gary Booher, an editor for the LGBT Mormon organization Affirmation, said "It was so realistic that it was scary. I felt exposed as the particulars of my experience and of others I know was brazenly spread across the big screen for all to behold."
### Awards
## Soundtrack
Eric Allaman scored the soundtrack to the film after shooting wrapped, and composed much of the score himself. Several scenes featuring the rapid passing of time, such as Christian's desperate search for Aaron at Salt Lake City Airport, were scored with techno style beats, and scenes with emotional content were given a more "ambient 'tronica feel". A total of three songs were written by C. Jay Cox for Rebekah Johnson to sing: "More", "Another Beautiful Day", and "Tuesday 3:00 a.m.". Allaman was very impressed with Cox's musical ability, and both men composed more songs as background music.
The official soundtrack album was released on October 26, 2004. Due to contractual reasons, Johnson did not appear on the album, and her character's songs were performed by Nita Whitaker instead.
## Novelization and other releases
In 2004, the Latter Days screenplay was adapted into a novel by freelance writer T. Fabris, which was published by Alyson Publications. The book was faithful to the film, but added several extra scenes that explained confusing aspects of the film and gave more about the characters' backgrounds. For example, the reason Ryder tells Christian where to find Aaron is his own broken heart over a girl he fell in love with while on his mission training. The novel also added dialogue that had been cut out of the film: finishing, for example Christian's cry – in the film – of "That's the hand I use to..." with "masturbate with."
In France, Latter Days has been titled La Tentation d'Aaron ("The Temptation of Aaron"), and the DVD given a cover showing Aaron in a nude and suggestive pose. A new trailer was also released, which is considerably more sexual than the original. In Italy, Latter Days is distributed by Fourlab. The film was re-titled Inguaribili Romantici ("Hopeless Romantics"), shown on pay-TV on Sky Show in December 2006, and then released on DVD by Fourlab's gay-themed label "OutLoud!". The film is also available in an Italian-language-dubbed version.
## See also
- List of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender-related films by storyline
- Orgazmo
- The Book of Mormon (musical)
- Portrayals of Mormons in popular media
- Homosexuality and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
|
35,587,737 |
Ichthyovenator
| 1,170,337,970 |
Genus of dinosaur
|
[
"Aptian genera",
"Cretaceous Laos",
"Early Cretaceous dinosaurs of Asia",
"Fossil taxa described in 2012",
"Fossils of Laos",
"Spinosaurids"
] |
Ichthyovenator is a genus of spinosaurid dinosaur that lived in what is now Laos, sometime between 125 and 113 million years ago, during the Aptian stage of the Early Cretaceous period. It is known from fossils collected from the Grès supérieurs Formation of the Savannakhet Basin, the first of which were found in 2010, consisting of a partial skeleton without the skull or limbs. This specimen became the holotype of the new genus and species Ichthyovenator laosensis, and was described by palaeontologist Ronan Allain and colleagues in 2012. The generic name, meaning "fish hunter", refers to its assumed piscivorous lifestyle, while the specific name alludes to the country of Laos. In 2014, it was announced that more remains from the dig site had been recovered; these fossils included teeth, more vertebrae (backbones) and a pubic bone from the same individual.
The holotype specimen is estimated to have been between 8.5 to 10.5 metres (28 to 34 feet) long and to have weighed 2.4 tonnes (2.6 short tons; 2.4 long tons). Ichthyovenator's teeth were straight and conical, and its neck resembled that of the closely related genus Sigilmassasaurus. Like others in its family, Ichthyovenator had tall neural spines that formed a sail on its back. Unlike other known spinosaurids, Ichthyovenator's sail had a sinusoidal (wave-like) shape that curved downwards over the hips and divided into two separate sails. The pelvic girdle was reduced; the ilium—the uppermost body of the pelvis—was proportionately longer than both the pubis and ischium than in other known theropod dinosaurs. Ichthyovenator was initially thought to belong to the subfamily Baryonychinae but more recent analyses place it as a primitive member of the Spinosaurinae.
As a spinosaur, Ichthyovenator would have had a long, shallow snout and robust forelimbs. Its diet likely mainly consisted of aquatic prey, hence its etymology. Spinosaurids are also known to have eaten small dinosaurs and pterosaurs in addition to fish. Ichthyovenator's conspicuous sail might have been used for sexual display or species recognition. Fossil evidence suggests spinosaurids, especially spinosaurines, were adapted for semiaquatic lifestyles. The vertebral spines of Ichthyovenator's tail were unusually tall, suggesting—as in today's crocodilians—the tail may have aided in swimming. Ichthyovenator lived alongside sauropod and ornithopod dinosaurs, as well as bivalves, fish and turtles.
## Discovery and naming
The first fossils of Ichthyovenator were found in 2010 at Ban Kalum in the Grès supérieurs Formation of the Savannakhet Basin in Savannakhet Province, Laos. These fossilized bones were recovered from a red sandstone layer within a surface area of less than 2 square metres (22 sq ft). Designated under the specimen numbers MDS BK10-01 to 15, they consist of a partly articulated, well-preserved skeleton lacking the skull and limbs, and including the third-to-last dorsal (back) vertebra, the neural spine of the last dorsal vertebra, five partial sacral (hip) vertebrae, the first two caudal (tail) vertebrae, both ilia (main hip bones), a right pubis (pubic bone), both ischia (lower and rearmost hip bones) and a posterior dorsal rib. The twelfth dorsal spine is bent sideways when viewed front-to-back due to taphonomic distorsion. The centra (vertebral bodies) of the sacrals are largely incomplete due to erosion, but preserved all of their accompanying spines with their upper edges intact. At the time of Ichthyovenator's description, excavations at the site were still ongoing.
After undergoing preparation in 2011, the skeleton was used as the basis, or holotype, for the type species Ichthyovenator laosensis, which was named and described in 2012 by palaeontologists Ronan Allain, Tiengkham Xeisanavong, Philippe Richir, and Bounsou Khentavong. The generic name is derived from the Old Greek word ἰχθύς (ichthys), "fish", and the Latin word venator, "hunter", in reference to its likely piscivorous (fish-eating) lifestyle. The specific name refers to its provenance from Laos. Ichthyovenator is the third named spinosaurid dinosaur from Asia after the Thai genus Siamosaurus in 1986 and the Chinese species "Sinopliosaurus" fusuiensis in 2009. The latter may represent the same animal as Siamosaurus. In 2014, Allain published a conference paper on Ichthyovenator; the abstract indicated additional remains from the original individual had been found after excavations continued in 2012. These remains include three teeth, the left pubis, and many vertebrae, including a nearly complete neck, the first dorsal vertebra, and seven more caudal vertebrae. Some of these additional vertebrae were compared with those of other spinosaurids in a 2015 paper by German palaeontologist Serjoscha Evers and colleagues, in which they noted similarities with the vertebrae of the African spinosaurid Sigilmassasaurus.
## Description
In 2016, Gregory S. Paul estimated Ichthyovenator to have been approximately 8.5 metres (28 ft) long and to have weighed 2 tonnes (2.2 short tons; 2.0 long tons). The same year, Rubén Molina-Pérez and Asier Larramendi gave an estimate of 10.5 m (34 ft) in length, 2.95 m (9 ft 8 in) tall at the hips, and 2.4 t (2.6 short tons; 2.4 long tons) in weight.
Ichthyovenator's teeth were conical, straight, and bore no serrations. The front edges of the maxillary and dentary teeth were evident on the base of the tooth crown. The front articulating surfaces of Ichthyovenator's rear cervical and front dorsal vertebrae were one-and-a-half times wider than they were high and wider than the length of their centra. They also bore robust front tubercles (processes for skeletal muscle attachment) and lacked interzygapophyseal laminae (bony plates), which resulted in their spinopre- and spinopostzygapophyseal fossae (depressions) having open undersides. The first dorsal vertebra had extensive transverse processes (wing-like projections that articulate with the ribs), as well as deep excavations at the front and back of its base that were filled by air sacs in life. The parapophyses (processes that articulated with the capitulum of the ribs) increased in height from the rear cervicals to the first dorsal; its underside remained in contact with the front lower edge of the centrum. This is unlike the condition in most theropods, in which the parapophyses shifted towards the top of the vertebra during the transition from cervical to dorsal vertebrae. All of these features were also present in Sigilmassasaurus. Ichthyovenator's mid-cervical vertebrae had elongate, somewhat wider-than-tall centra that became progressively shorter towards the rear of the neck, as well as well-developed keels on their bottom surfaces, traits that were shared with the spinosaurids Baryonyx, Suchomimus, Sigilmassasaurus, and Vallibonavenatrix. The cervical neural spines of Ichthyovenator were taller than in Sigilmassasaurus and Baryonyx but shared the blade-like shape with those two taxa at the mid-cervicals. The holotype dorsal rib, which was found near the twelfth dorsal vertebra, had a head typical of the ribs of other moderate-to-large-sized theropods. The rib shaft formed a half-circle. The rib's lower end was slightly expanded both sideways and to the front and back. This condition, which differs from the tapered, pointed tips seen in the ribs of other theropods, suggests the rearmost dorsal ribs articulated with the complex of the sternum (breast bone).
Like many other spinosaurids, Ichthyovenator had a sail on its back and hips that was formed by the elongated neural spines of its vertebrae. Uniquely among known members of the family, Ichthyovenator's sail was divided in two over the hips and had a sinusoid (wave-like) curvature. This is in contrast to the related genera Spinosaurus and Suchomimus—both of which had continuous sails that rose to a peak before sloping down again—and Baryonyx, which showed a less-developed sail, having much lower dorsal spines. Ichthyovenator's preserved dorsal and sacral spinal column, which is over 1 m (3 ft 3 in) long, shows a very high spine on the twelfth dorsal vertebra representing a crest that rose from the back and a lower rounded sail that extended from the sacral vertebrae of the hips; the latter sail's apex was located above the third and fourth sacrals. The 54.6-centimetre (21.5 in) high spine of the twelfth dorsal vertebra widened towards the top, giving it a trapezoidal shape—similar to the condition seen in a neural spine from Vallibonavenatrix—whereas the spines of other known spinosaurids were roughly rectangular. It also lacked the forward or backward inclination of Spinosaurus's neural spines. Its front corner formed a 3-centimetre (1.2 in) narrow-process, pointing upwards. The spine of the thirteenth dorsal vertebra has been only partly preserved; its upper and lower ends had broken off from taphonomic causes. From its general shape, the describers inferred however, it was about as long as the preceding spine. This would imply the back edge of the front sail would form a rectangular corner, because the spine of the much lower first sacral vertebra is about 21 cm (8.3 in), creating a sudden hiatus in the sail's profile. The spine of the second sacral vertebra steeply curved upwards again, joining the 39 cm (15 in) and 48 cm (19 in) high, broad, fan-shaped spines of the third and fourth sacrals. The 40 cm (16 in) tall spine of the fifth sacral gradually descended. Unlike in the sails of most other theropods, including that of Suchomimus, the sacral spines were not fused and had no extensive contacts. The second and third sacral centra were fused; the suture connecting them was still visible. Only the rearmost two dorsal vertebrae are preserved, so to what extent the dorsal sail continued towards the front of the animal's back is unknown.
The sacral sail was continued by the spines of the first two caudal vertebrae, which were 28.4 cm (11.2 in) and 25.7 cm (10.1 in) tall respectively. They leaned backwards at 30 degrees and had smooth front and rear edges. The centra of the first two caudals were much broader than long and amphicoelous (deeply concave on both ends). The caudal transverse processes were prominent and sturdy and were angled upwards towards the rear of the vertebrae. The transverse processes of the first caudal vertebra, when seen from above, had a sigmoid (or S-shaped) profile. The prespinal and postspinal fossae (bony depressions in front and behind the neural spines) were confined to a position above the base of the neural spines. The sides of the first caudal were also deeply hollowed out between the prezygapophyses (articular surfaces of the preceding vertebra) and the diapophyses—processes on the sides for rib articulation—a condition that is not observed in other theropods. Some of the caudal vertebrae also had unusually tall, forwardly-extended prezygapophyses. The 92-centimetre (36 in) long ilium of the pelvis was blade-like, and longer in proportion to the 65-centimetre (26 in) long pubic bone than that of any other known large theropod. The postacetabular ala (rear expansion) was much longer than the preacetabular ala (front expansion), which had a shelf on its central surface that formed the middle edge of the preacetabular fossa. Viewed distally (towards the centre of attachment), the lower end of the pubis had an L-shape resembling that of Baryonyx. The pubic apron—the expanded lower end of the pubis—had a large pubic foramen. On the hind rim of the pubic bone, two openings—the obturator foramen and a lower fenestra (opening)—were open and notch-like. The ischium was 49.6 cm (19.5 in) long, making it shorter in relation to the pubis than in all other known tetanuran theropods. The ischium's main body was large and extensive—atypical of the Y-shaped upper ischia of other tetanurans—and bore an oval-shaped obturator foramen in its side. The shaft of the ischium was flattened sideways, and had an unexpanded ischiadic apron, as in Monolophosaurus and Sinraptor. The ischium attached to the ilium via a peg-and-socket-like articulation, unlike the flat, concave condition seen in Baryonyx. This feature was also present in Vallibonavenatrix.
## Classification
In 2012, Ichthyovenator's describers established the unique derived traits of the genus: its dorsal and sacral sinusoidal sail; the thirteenth dorsal neural spine being 410% the length of the centrum, and its distinct, finger-shaped process on its front upper corner; the broad, expanded tips of the third and fourth sacral spines; the first caudal vertebra's deep prezygapophyseal and centrodiapophyseal fossae and S-shaped transverse processes in top view; and the higher ratio of length between the ilium and the accompanying pubis than in any other known theropod. Allain and colleagues also identified some anatomical features that are unique among other known tetanuran theropods, including the rearmost dorsal ribs articulating with the sternal complex, the pubis's main body having obturator and pubic openings, and the ischium having a foramen on its upper end and a shaft that was flattened sideways. The shrinkage of the pubis and ischium relative to the pelvis has been observed in basal coelurosaurs and allosauroids, which the describers attributed to mosaic evolution: the evolution of certain anatomical traits at different times in separate species.
Allain and his team considered Ichthyovenator as representing the first unequivocal spinosaurid from Asia. Though prior spinosaurids had been named from the continent—including Siamosaurus from Thailand's Barremian Sao Khua Formation and "Sinopliosaurus" fusuiensis from China's Aptian Xinlong Formation—the authors noted that palaeontologists have debated the validity of these taxa because they are only confidently known from isolated teeth. Brazilian palaeontologists Marcos Sales and Caesar Schultz have suggested these teeth may eventually be attributed to spinosaurids similar to Ichthyovenator. In addition to tooth fossils, a spinosaurid skeleton that possibly belongs to Siamosaurus was excavated from the Thai Khok Kruat Formation in 2004 and was identified as a definite spinosaur in a 2008 conference abstract by Angela Milner and colleagues, eight years prior to Ichthyovenator's description.
In 2012, Allain and colleagues assigned Ichthyovenator to the Spinosauridae; more precisely to the subfamily Baryonychinae in a basal position as the sister taxon of a clade formed by Baryonyx and Suchomimus. In Allain's 2014 abstract, he found Ichthyovenator instead as belonging to the Spinosaurinae, due to the lack of serrations on its teeth and the similarities of its vertebrae to those of Sigilmassasaurus. In a 2015 phylogenetic analysis by Evers and colleagues, they suggested the apparent presence of both baryonychine and spinosaurine characteristics in Ichthyovenator means the distinction between the two subfamilies may not be as clear as previously thought. In 2017, American palaeontologist Mickey Mortimer informally hypothesized Ichthyovenator may have been a sail-backed carcharodontosaurid dinosaur closely related to Concavenator, rather than a spinosaurid. Mortimer considered Ichthyovenator as incertae sedis (of uncertain taxonomic affinity) within the clade Orionides, pending description of the new material, which she states will likely confirm Ichthyovenator's spinosaurid identity. A 2017 analysis by Sales and Schultz questioned Baryonychinae's validity, citing the morphology of Brazilian spinosaurids Irritator and Angaturama, and suggesting they may have been transitionary forms between the earlier baryonychines and the later spinosaurines. The authors said with further research, Baryonychinae may be found to be a paraphyletic (unnatural) grouping. Ichthyovenator's spinosaurine classification was supported by Thomas Arden and colleagues in 2018, who resolved it as a basal member of the group due to its tall dorsal sail. Their cladogram can be seen below:
## Palaeobiology
Though no skull remains have been found for Ichthyovenator, all known spinosaurids had elongated, low, narrow snouts that allowed them to reach far for food and to quickly close their jaws in a manner similar to modern crocodilians. The tips of spinosaurids' upper and lower jaws fanned out into a rosette-like shape that bore long teeth, behind which there was a notch in the upper jaw; this formed a natural trap for prey. Like those of other spinosaurids, Ichthyovenator's straight, unserrated teeth would have been suitable for impaling and capturing small animals and aquatic prey. This type of jaw and tooth morphology, which is also observed in today's gharials and other fish-eating predators, has led many palaeontologists to believe spinosaurids were largely piscivorous (as implied by Ichthyovenator's name). This is also evidenced by the discovery of Scheenstia fish scales in the stomach cavity of one Baryonyx skeleton and a Spinosaurus snout that was found with a vertebra from the sclerorynchid fish Onchopristis embedded in it. A more generalist diet has also been proposed for spinosaurs, based on fossils such as the bones of a juvenile iguanodontid that was also found in the same Baryonyx specimen, an "Irritator" tooth embedded in the vertebrae of a pterosaur, and tooth crowns from Siamosaurus that were found in association with sauropod dinosaur bones. It is thus likely that spinosaurids were also scavengers or hunters of larger prey. Though no limb bones are known from Ichthyovenator, all known spinosaurids had well-built arms with enlarged thumb claws, which they likely used to hunt and process prey.
Many possible functions, including thermoregulation and energy storage, have been proposed for spinosaurid sails. In 2012, Allain and colleagues suggested considering the high diversity in neural spine elongation observed in theropod dinosaurs, as well as histological research done on the sails of synapsids (stem mammals), Ichthyovenator's sinusoidal sail may have been used for courtship display or for recognising members of its own species. In a 2013 blog post, Darren Naish considered the latter function unlikely, favouring the hypothesis of sexual selection for Ichthyovenator's sail because it appears to have evolved on its own, without very close relatives. Naish also notes that it is possible similar relatives have not yet been discovered.
Spinosaurids appear to have had semiaquatic lifestyles, spending much of their time near or in water, which has been inferred by the high density of their limb bones that would have made them less buoyant, and the oxygen isotope ratios of their teeth being closer to those of remains from aquatic animals like turtles, crocodilians, and hippopotamuses than those of other, more terrestrial theropods. Semiaquatic adaptations seem to have been more developed in spinosaurines than baryonychines. Arden and colleagues in 2018 suggested the shortness of Ichthyovenator's pubis and ischium relative to its ilium, coupled with the elongation of the neural spines in the tails of early spinosaurines, are indications that spinosaurids may have progressively made more use of their tails to propel themselves underwater as they grew more adapted to an aquatic lifestyle. A similar, though more extreme, shrinkage of the pelvic girdle and elongation of the tail's neural spines, creating a paddle-like structure, was observed in Spinosaurus, which appears to have been more aquatic than any other known non-avian (or non-bird) dinosaur.
## Palaeoecology and palaeobiogeography
Ichthyovenator is known from the Barremian to Cenomanian Grès supérieurs Formation, and was found in a layer probably dating to the Aptian stage of the Early Cretaceous period between 125 and 113 million years ago. It coexisted with other dinosaurs such as the sauropod Tangvayosaurus, and an indeterminate sauropod, iguanodontian, and neoceratopsian. Tracks of theropod, sauropod and ornithopod dinosaurs, as well as plant remains, are also known from the formation. Fossils of non-dinosaurian fauna are represented by ray-finned fish like Lanxangichthys and Lepidotes, as well as turtles including Shachemys, Xinjiangchelys, and an indeterminate carettochelyid and trionychid. The trigoniid bivalves Trigonioides and Plicatounio have also been recovered from the formation. The Grès supérieurs Formation is the lateral equivalent of the neighbouring Khok Kruat and Phu Phan Formations in Thailand; from the Khok Kruat formation, fossils of theropods (including spinosaurids), sauropods, iguanodontians, and freshwater fish have also been recovered.
In 2010, Stephen L. Brusatte and colleagues noted the discovery of spinosaurids in Asia, a family previously known only from Europe, Africa, and South America, suggests there was faunal interchange between the supercontinents Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south during the early Late Cretaceous. It may also be possible spinosaurids already had a cosmopolitan distribution before the Middle Cretaceous preceding the breakup of Laurasia from Gondwana, but the authors noted more evidence is needed to test this hypothesis. In 2012, Allain and colleagues suggested such a global distribution may have occurred earlier across Pangaea before the Late Jurassic, even if Asia was the first landmass to be separated during the breakup of the supercontinent. In 2019, Elisabete Malafaia and colleagues also indicated a complex biogeographical pattern for spinosaurs during the Early Cretaceous based on anatomical similarities between Ichthyovenator and the European genus Vallibonavenatrix.
|
13,026,036 |
SMS Roon
| 1,160,118,775 |
Armored cruiser of the German Imperial Navy
|
[
"1903 ships",
"Roon-class cruisers",
"Ships built in Kiel",
"World War I cruisers of Germany"
] |
SMS Roon was the lead ship of her class of armored cruisers built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the early 1900s as part of a major naval expansion program aimed at strengthening the fleet. The ship was named after Field Marshal Albrecht von Roon. She was built at the Kaiserliche Werft in Kiel, being laid down in August 1902, launched in June 1903, and commissioned in April 1906. The ship was armed with a main battery of four 21 cm (8.3 in) guns and had a top speed of 20.4 knots (37.8 km/h; 23.5 mph). Like many of the late armored cruisers, Roon was quickly rendered obsolescent by the advent of the battlecruiser; as a result, her career was limited.
Roon served in I Scouting Group, the reconnaissance force of the High Seas Fleet, for the duration of her peacetime career, including several stints as the flagship of the group's deputy commander. During this period, the ship was occupied with training exercises and made several cruises in the Atlantic Ocean. In 1907, she visited the United States to represent Germany during the Jamestown Exposition. In September 1911 she was decommissioned and placed in reserve.
Three years later, the ship was mobilized in August 1914 following the outbreak of World War I and assigned to III Scouting Group, serving initially with the High Seas Fleet in the North Sea. There, she escorted the main German fleet during the raid on Yarmouth in November and the raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby in December, though she saw no action during either operation. She was transferred to the Baltic Sea in April 1915 and took part in several operations against Russian forces, including the successful attack on Libau in May and the failed attack on Riga in August. The threat of British submarines convinced the German command to withdraw old vessels like Roon by early 1916, and she was again decommissioned and eventually used as a training ship. Plans to convert her into a seaplane tender in 1918 came to nothing with the end of the war, and she was broken up in 1921.
## Design
The two Roon-class cruisers were ordered in 1902 as part of the fleet expansion program specified by the Second Naval Law of 1900. The two ships were incremental developments of the preceding Prinz Adalbert-class cruisers, the most significant difference being a longer hull; the extra space was used to add a pair of boilers, which increased power by 2,028 metric horsepower (2,000 ihp) and speed by 0.5 knots (0.93 km/h; 0.58 mph). The launch of the British battlecruiser HMS Invincible in 1907 quickly rendered all of the armored cruisers that had been built by the world's navies obsolescent.
Roon was 127.8 m (419 ft 3 in) long overall and had a beam of 20.2 m (66 ft 3 in) and a draft of 7.76 m (25 ft 6 in) forward. She displaced 9,533 metric tons (9,382 long tons) as built and 10,266 t (10,104 long tons) fully loaded. She was propelled by three vertical triple expansion engines, each driving a screw propeller, with steam provided by sixteen coal-fired water-tube boilers. The ship's propulsion system developed a total of 19,000 metric horsepower (19,000 ihp) and yielded a maximum speed of 21.1 knots (39.1 km/h; 24.3 mph) on trials, falling short of her intended speed of 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph). She carried up to 1,570 t (1,550 long tons) of coal, which enabled a maximum range of up to 4,200 nautical miles (7,800 km; 4,800 mi) at a cruising speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph). Roon had a crew of 35 officers and 598 enlisted men.
She was armed with four 21 cm (8.3 in) SK L/40 guns arranged in two twin-gun turrets, one on either end of the superstructure. Her secondary armament consisted of ten 15 cm (5.9 in) SK L/40 guns; four were in single-gun turrets on the upper deck and the remaining six were in casemates in a main-deck battery. For close-range defense against torpedo boats, she carried fourteen 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK L/35 guns, all in individual mounts in the superstructure and in the hull, either in casemates or open pivot mounts with gun shields. She also had four 45 cm (17.7 in) underwater torpedo tubes, one in the bow, one in the stern, and one on each broadside.
The ship was protected with Krupp cemented armor; the belt armor was 10 cm (3.9 in) thick amidships and was reduced to 8 cm (3.1 in) on either end. The main battery turrets had 15 cm (5.9 in) thick faces. Her deck was 4–6 cm (1.6–2.4 in) thick, connected to the lower edge of the belt by 4–5 cm (1.6–2.0 in) thick sloped armor.
## Service history
Roon was ordered under the provisional name Ersatz Kaiser as a replacement for the ironclad Kaiser. The ship was built at the Imperial Dockyard in Kiel under construction number 28. Her keel was laid down on 1 August 1902 and she was launched on 27 June 1903. At her launching ceremony, Field Marshal Alfred von Waldersee christened the ship Roon after Field Marshal Albrecht von Roon. Fitting-out work then commenced, which included provisions for the cruiser to be used as a flagship, and Roon was commissioned into the German fleet on 5 April 1906. Her first commander was Kapitän zur See (KzS—Captain at Sea) Fritz Hoffmann. The ship then began sea trials that lasted until 9 July; she joined I Scouting Group on 15 August, where she replaced the armored cruiser Friedrich Carl as the flagship of the deputy commander, KzS and Kommodore (Commodore) Raimund Winkler. Roon then participated in the annual fleet maneuvers held in late August and early September. Later that month, Hoffmann was replaced by Fregattenkapitän (FK—Frigate Captain) Oskar von Platen-Hallermund, who commanded the vessel for just a month before he was in turn relieved by KzS Karl Zimmermann. At the same time as Hoffmann's departure, Winkler also left his post, being replaced by KzS and Kommodore Eugen Kalau vom Hofe, who transferred his flag to Friedrich Carl in October.
She spent the following years participating in training exercises and cruises with the ships of I Scouting Group as well as the entire High Seas Fleet. This routine was interrupted in early 1907 when the ship was sent to the United States to participate in the Jamestown Exposition, which commemorated the 300th anniversary of the arrival of colonists in Chesapeake Bay. Kalau von Hofe returned to Roon to lead the German delegation, which also included the light cruiser Bremen; the two cruisers left Kiel on 8 April and crossed the Atlantic to Hampton Roads, Virginia, arriving on 24 April. Two days later, the international fleet, which also included contingents from Great Britain, Japan, Austria-Hungary, France, Italy, and several other nations, held a naval review as part of the exposition. Following the ceremonies, Bremen was detached to remain on station in the Americas while Roon returned to Germany, arriving back in Kiel on 17 May. On her return, Kalau von Hofe shifted back to Friedrich Carl.
From 11 September to 28 October, Roon briefly resumed her role as deputy flagship; Friedrich Carl was at that time serving as the group flagship while Roon's sister Yorck was being overhauled. Also in October, FK Friedrich Schrader took command of the ship. The ship went on a major cruise into the Atlantic Ocean from 7 to 28 February 1908 with the other ships of the scouting group. During the cruise, the ships conducted tactical exercises and experimented with using their wireless telegraphy equipment at long distances. They stopped in Vigo, Spain, to replenish their coal for the voyage home. On 5 March, Roon returned to flagship duty, with now Konteradmiral (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Kalau von Hofe back aboard the ship.
Another Atlantic cruise followed in July and August; this time, the cruise was made in company with the battleship squadrons of the High Seas Fleet. Prince Heinrich, the fleet commander, had pressed for such a cruise the previous year, arguing that it would prepare the fleet for overseas operations and would 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 to the Atlantic. The fleet returned to Germany on 13 August. The autumn maneuvers followed from 27 August to 12 September. On 23 September, KAdm Jacobsen replaced Kalau von Hofe, and the following month FK Georg Scheidt took command of Roon.
The year 1909 saw two more cruises in the Atlantic, the first in February with just the ships of I Scouting Group and the second in July and August with the rest of the fleet. On the way back to Germany, the fleet stopped in Spithead, Britain, where it was received by the Royal Navy. KzS Reinhard Koch relieved Jacobsen as the group deputy commander after the annual fleet maneuvers in September 1909 but on 1 October he transferred his flag to Yorck. The next two years passed uneventfully for Roon; apart from the typical training routine, she took part in a naval review for Kaiser Wilhelm II in September 1911, after which she was decommissioned on 22 September.
### World War I
Following the outbreak of World War I in July 1914, Roon was mobilized for wartime service on 2 August and was initially assigned to II Scouting Group as the flagship of KAdm Gisberth Jasper. The ship's first wartime commander was KzS Johannes von Karpf. A series of reorganizations saw the ship transferred to IV Scouting Group to replace the armored cruiser Blücher and on 25 August IV Scouting Group was renamed III Scouting Group, Roon remaining as flagship. KAdm Hubert von Rebeur-Paschwitz replaced Jasper as the group commander. The following day, Roon and the rest of the group took part in a sortie into the eastern Baltic Sea in a failed attempt to rescue the light cruiser Magdeburg that had run aground in Russian territory. The operation was cancelled on 27 August when Rebeur-Paschwitz received word that Magdeburg had been scuttled to avoid capture by Russian forces.
The group was stationed in the North Sea from 6 September to guard the German coast, interrupted by a short deployment to the Danish straits from 25 to 26 September after false reports of British warships attempting to pass through prompted the German command to send the cruisers on a patrol there. During their period in the North Sea, the cruisers were sent to escort the minelaying cruisers Nautilus and Albatross and the auxiliary minelayer Kaiser as they laid the "Alpha" defensive minefield in the North Sea. The ships then escorted the main body of the High Seas Fleet during the raid on Yarmouth on 2–3 November.
A month later, on 15–16 December, she participated in the bombardment of Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby. Along with the armored cruiser Prinz Heinrich, Roon was assigned to the van of the High Seas Fleet, which was providing distant cover to Rear Admiral Franz von Hipper's battlecruisers while they were conducting the bombardment. During the operation, Roon and her attached destroyers encountered the British screening forces; Roon came in contact with the destroyers HMS Lynx and Unity, but no gunfire was exchanged and the ships turned away. Following reports of British destroyers from Roon as well as from Hamburg, Admiral von Ingenohl ordered the High Seas Fleet to disengage and head for Germany. At this point, Roon and her destroyers became the rearguard for the High Seas Fleet. Roon, by this time joined by the light cruisers Stuttgart and Hamburg, encountered Commander Loftus Jones' destroyers. Jones shadowed Roon for about 45 minutes, at which point Stuttgart and Hamburg were detached to sink their pursuers. Twenty minutes later, Roon signaled the two light cruisers and ordered them to abandon the pursuit and retreat along with the rest of the High Seas Fleet. In the meantime, Vice Admiral David Beatty received word of Roon's location, and in an attempt to intercept the German cruisers, detached the battlecruiser HMS New Zealand to hunt the German ships down, while his other three battlecruisers followed from a distance. While still pursuing the retreating Germans, Beatty had become aware that the German battlecruisers were shelling Hartlepool, so he decided to break off the pursuit of Roon and turn towards the German battlecruisers.
#### Operations in the Baltic
The German naval command decided that because Roon and the other armored cruisers of the III Scouting Group were slow and lacked thick enough armor, they were unsuitable for service in the North Sea where they would risk contact with the powerful British Grand Fleet. Therefore, on 15 April 1915, Roon and the rest of III Scouting Group were transferred to the Baltic, where they would face the significantly weaker Russian Baltic Fleet. The unit was dissolved and Roon and the other vessels were assigned to the Reconnaissance Forces of the Baltic, under the command of KAdm Albert Hopman. At the same time, FK Hans Gygas replaced Karpf, who in turn became the deputy commander of the unit and made Roon his flagship. On 30 April, the ship went into drydock in Kiel for an overhaul, returning to service for the attack on Libau on 7 May. On 11 May, the British submarine E9 spotted Roon and several other ships en route to Libau, which had been recently captured by the German army. E9 fired five torpedoes at the German flotilla, all of which missed; two passed closely astern of Roon. Roon thereafter took part in a series of sorties into the central Baltic as far north as Gotska Sandön on 13–16 May, 23–26 May, 2–6 June, 11–13 June, and 20–22 June.
Karpf transferred to the light cruiser Lübeck while Hopman relocated to Roon since the latter's flagship, the armored cruiser Prinz Adalbert, was under repairs for a torpedo hit. Roon and Lübeck covered a minelaying operation with Albatross on 30 June that lasted through 2 July and resulted in the Battle of Åland Islands. The light cruiser Augsburg and three destroyers were escorting Albatross when they were attacked by the armored cruisers Bayan, Admiral Makarov, and the light cruisers Bogatyr and Oleg. Augsburg escaped while the destroyers covered the retreat of Albatross, which was severely damaged and forced to seek refuge in neutral Swedish waters. Roon joined Lübeck to relieve the beleaguered German destroyers. Upon arriving at the scene, Roon engaged Bayan, and Lübeck opened fire on Oleg. Shortly thereafter, the Russian cruiser Rurik, along with a destroyer, arrived to reinforce the Russian flotilla. In the following artillery duel, Roon was hit several times, and the German ships were forced to retreat.
Later in July, as the German Army began to push further north from Libau, the naval command reinforced the naval forces in the Baltic to support the advance. The pre-dreadnought battleships of the IV Battle Squadron were transferred to the eastern Baltic and its commander, Vizeadmiral (Vice Admiral) Ehrhard Schmidt, was placed in command of the naval forces in the area. In August, the German fleet attempted to clear the Gulf of Riga of Russian naval forces to aid the German Army advancing on the city. Elements of the High Seas Fleet were sent to strengthen the forces attempting to break into the gulf. The Germans made several attempts to force their way into the gulf during the Battle of the Gulf of Riga until reports of British submarines in the area prompted the Germans to call off the operation on 20 August. During these attacks, Roon remained outside the gulf and on 10 August, Roon and Prinz Heinrich shelled Russian positions at Zerel on the Sworbe Peninsula. There were several Russian destroyers anchored off Zerel; the German cruisers caught them by surprise and damaged one of them.
On 9 September, Hopman returned to Prinz Adalbert, allowing Roon to return to Kiel for an overhaul. Work was completed by mid-October and the ship returned to Libau on 18 October. Two days later, Hopman made her his flagship once again. The loss of Prinz Adalbert three days later to a British submarine convinced the German command that the threat of underwater weapons was too serious to continue to operate older vessels with insufficient protection, including Roon. Accordingly, on 15 January 1916, Hopman hauled down his flag, and two days later the ship left Libau to return to Kiel, where she was decommissioned on 4 February.
#### Fate
In November 1916, Roon was disarmed and converted into a training and accommodation ship. Stationed at Kiel, she served in this capacity until 1918. The German Navy had previously experimented with seaplane carriers, including the conversion of the old light cruiser Stuttgart early in 1918 for service with the fleet. Stuttgart could carry only two aircraft, which was deemed insufficient for fleet support. As a result, plans were drawn up to convert Roon into a seaplane carrier, with a capacity for four aircraft. The ship's main battery would have been removed and replaced with six 15 cm guns and six 8.8 cm anti-aircraft guns; the large hangar for the seaplanes was to have been installed aft of the main superstructure. The plan did not come to fruition, primarily because the German Navy relied on zeppelins for aerial reconnaissance, not seaplanes. Roon was struck from the naval register on 25 November 1920 and scrapped the following year in Kiel-Nordmole.
|
57,551 |
Third Punic War
| 1,173,361,124 |
War between the Rome and Carthage 149–146 BC
|
[
"140s BC conflicts",
"2nd century BC in the Roman Republic",
"Military history of Tunisia",
"Punic Wars",
"Third Punic War",
"Wars involving Carthage",
"Wars involving the Roman Republic"
] |
The Third Punic War (149–146 BC) was the third and last of the Punic Wars fought between Carthage and Rome. The war was fought entirely within Carthaginian territory, in what is now northern Tunisia. When the Second Punic War ended in 201 BC one of the terms of the peace treaty prohibited Carthage from waging war without Rome's permission. Rome's ally, King Masinissa of Numidia, exploited this to repeatedly raid and seize Carthaginian territory with impunity. In 149 BC Carthage sent an army, under Hasdrubal, against Masinissa, the treaty notwithstanding. The campaign ended in disaster as the Battle of Oroscopa ended with a Carthaginian defeat and the surrender of the Carthaginian army. Anti-Carthaginian factions in Rome used the illicit military action as a pretext to prepare a punitive expedition.
Later in 149 BC a large Roman army landed at Utica in North Africa. The Carthaginians hoped to appease the Romans, but despite the Carthaginians surrendering all of their weapons, the Romans pressed on to besiege the city of Carthage. The Roman campaign suffered repeated setbacks through 149 BC, only alleviated by Scipio Aemilianus, a middle-ranking officer, distinguishing himself several times. A new Roman commander took over in 148 BC and fared equally badly. At the annual election of Roman magistrates in early 147 BC the public support for Scipio was so great that the usual age restrictions were lifted to allow him to be appointed consul and commander in Africa.
Scipio's term commenced with two Carthaginian successes, but he tightened the siege and started to build a large mole to prevent supplies from getting into Carthage via blockade runners. The Carthaginians had partially rebuilt their fleet, and it sortied, to the Romans' surprise. After an indecisive engagement, the Carthaginians mismanaged their withdrawal and lost many ships. The Romans then built a large brick structure in the harbour area that dominated the city wall. Once this was complete, Scipio led a strong force that stormed the camp of Carthage's field army and forced most of the towns and cities still supporting Carthage to surrender. In the spring of 146 BC the Romans launched their final assault and, over six days, systematically destroyed the city and killed its inhabitants; only on the last day did they take prisoners, 50,000 of them, who were sold into slavery. The conquered Carthaginian territories became the Roman province of Africa, with Utica as its capital. It was a century before the site of Carthage was rebuilt as a Roman city.
## Primary sources
The main source for most aspects of the Punic Wars is the historian Polybius (c. 200 – c. 118 BC), a Greek sent to Rome in 167 BC as a hostage. His works include a now-lost manual on military tactics, but he is best known for The Histories, written sometime after 146 BC. He accompanied his patron and friend, the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus, in North Africa during the Third Punic War; this causes the normally reliable Polybius to recount Scipio's actions in a favourable light. In addition, significant portions of The Histories' account of the Third Punic War have been lost.
The account of the Roman annalist Livy, who relied heavily on Polybius, is much used by modern historians of the Punic Wars, but all that survives of his account of events after 167 BC is a list of contents. Other ancient accounts of the Third Punic War or its participants which have also been largely lost include those of Plutarch, Dio Cassius and the Greek Diodorus Siculus. Modern historians also use the account of the 2nd-century AD Greek Appian. The modern historian Bernard Mineo states that it "is the only complete and continuous account of this war". It is thought to have been largely based on Polybius's account, but several problems with it have been identified. These issues mean that of the three Punic Wars, the third is the one about which the least is reliably known. Other sources include coins, inscriptions, archaeological evidence and empirical evidence from reconstructions.
## Background
In the mid-2nd-century BC Rome was the dominant power in the Mediterranean region, while Carthage was a large city-state in the north east of what is now Tunisia. The Carthaginians were referred to by the Romans by the Latin word Punicus (or Poenicus) and is a reference to Carthage's Phoenician origin. "Punic" derives from this usage. Carthage and Rome had fought the 23-year-long First Punic War from 264 to 241 BC and the 17-year-long Second Punic War between 218 and 201 BC. Both wars ended with Roman victories; the Second when the Roman general Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal, the premier Carthaginian general of the war, at the Battle of Zama, 160 kilometres (100 mi) south west of Carthage. Africanus imposed a peace treaty on the Carthaginians which stripped them of their overseas territories and some of their African ones. An indemnity of 10,000 silver talents was to be paid over 50 years. Hostages were taken and Carthage was prohibited from waging war outside Africa—and could wage war in Africa only with Rome's express permission. Many senior Carthaginians wanted to reject the treaty, but Hannibal spoke strongly in its favour and it was accepted in spring 201 BC. Henceforth, it was clear that Carthage was politically subordinate to Rome.
At the end of the war Masinissa, an ally of Rome, emerged as by far the most powerful ruler among the Numidians, the indigenous population which controlled much of what is now Algeria and Tunisia. Over the following 50 years, he repeatedly took advantage of Carthage's inability to protect its possessions. Whenever Carthage petitioned Rome for redress or permission to take military action, Rome backed Masinissa and refused. Masinissa's seizures of and raids into Carthaginian territory became increasingly flagrant. In 151 BC Carthage raised a large army commanded by the previously unrecorded Carthaginian general Hasdrubal and, the treaty notwithstanding, counter-attacked the Numidians. The campaign ended in disaster at the Battle of Oroscopa and the army surrendered. Many Carthaginians were subsequently massacred by the Numidians. Hasdrubal escaped to Carthage, where, in an attempt to placate Rome, he was condemned to death.
Carthage paid off its indemnity in 151 BC and was prospering economically but was no military threat to Rome. Nevertheless, there had long been a faction within the Roman Senate that had wished to take further military action against Carthage. For example, the dislike of Carthage by the senior senator Cato was so well known that since the 18th century (AD), he has been credited with ending all of his speeches with Carthago delenda est ("Carthage must be destroyed"). The opposing faction included Scipio Nasica, who argued that fear of a strong enemy such as Carthage would keep the common people in check and avoid social division. Cato was a member of an embassy to Carthage, probably in 153 BC, and noted her growing economy and strength; Nasica was likely a member of the same embassy. Using the illicit Carthaginian military action as a pretext, Rome began preparing a punitive expedition.
Modern scholars have advanced several theories as to why Rome was eager for war. These include: a Roman fear of Carthaginian commercial competition; a desire to forestall a wider war which might have broken out with the death of Masinissa, who was aged 89 at the time; the factional use of Carthage as a political "bogeyman", irrespective of her true power; a greed for glory and loot; and a desire to quash a political system which Rome considered anathema. No consensus has been reached regarding these and other hypotheses. Carthaginian embassies attempted to negotiate with Rome, which responded evasively. The large North African port city of Utica, some 55 km (34 mi) north of Carthage, went over to Rome in 149 BC. Aware that Utica's harbour would greatly facilitate any assault on Carthage, the Senate and the People's Assembly of Rome declared war on Carthage.
The Romans elected two men each year, known as consuls, as senior magistrates, who at time of war would each lead an army; on occasion their term of office was extended. A large Roman army landed at Utica in 149 BC under both consuls for the year, Manius Manilius commanding the army and Lucius Marcius Censorinus the fleet. The Carthaginians continued to attempt to appease Rome and sent an embassy to Utica. The consuls demanded that they hand over all weaponry, reluctantly the Carthaginians did so. Large convoys took enormous stocks of equipment from Carthage to Utica. Surviving records state that these included 200,000 sets of armour and 2,000 catapults. Carthage's warships all sailed to Utica and were burnt in the harbour. Once Carthage was disarmed, Censorinus made the further demand that the Carthaginians abandon their city and relocate 16 km (10 mi) away from the sea; Carthage would then be destroyed. The Carthaginians abandoned negotiations and prepared to defend their city.
## Opposing forces
The city of Carthage itself was unusually large for the time: modern scholars give population estimates ranging from 90,000 to 800,000. Any of these would make Carthage one of the most populous cities in the Mediterranean area at the time. It was strongly fortified with walls of more than 35 km (20 mi) circumference. Defending the main approach from the land were three lines of defences, of which the strongest was a brick-built wall 9 metres (30 ft) wide and 15–20 metres (50–70 ft) high with a 20-metre-wide (70 ft) ditch in front of it. Built into this wall was a barracks capable of holding over 24,000 soldiers. The city had few reliable sources of ground water but possessed a complex system to catch and channel rainwater and many cisterns to store it.
The Carthaginians raised a strong and enthusiastic force to garrison the city from their citizenry and by freeing all slaves willing to fight. They also formed a field army at least 20,000 strong, which was placed under Hasdrubal, freshly released from his condemned cell. This army was based at Nepheris, 25 km (16 mi) south of Carthage. Appian gives the strength of the Roman army which landed in Africa as 84,000 soldiers; modern historians estimate it at 40,000–50,000 men, of whom 4,000 were cavalry.
## Course of the war
### 149 BC
The Roman army moved to Carthage, unsuccessfully attempted to scale the city walls, and settled down for a siege. They set up two camps under command of legates: Censorinus's had the primary role of protecting the beached Roman ships and Manilius's housed the Roman legions. Hasdrubal moved up his army to harass the Roman supply lines and foraging parties. The Romans launched another assault on the city but were repulsed again. Scipio Aemilianus, the adopted grandson of Scipio Africanus, who was serving as a tribune – a middle-ranking military position – held back his men and was able to deploy them to beat off the pursuing Carthaginians, preventing heavy losses.
The camp established by Censorinus was badly situated and by early summer was so pestiferous that it was moved to a healthier location. This was not as defensible, and the Carthaginians inflicted losses on the Roman fleet with fireships. The Romans then made these attacks more difficult by building additional fortifications. Nevertheless, the Carthaginians repeatedly attacked the camps. In often confused fighting Scipio distinguished himself further by his role in thwarting these; the discipline which he imposed on his troops was in contrast with the behaviour of most of the rest of the Roman army.
Manilius decided to strike against the Carthaginians' main camp near Nepheris, despite its strong position and fortifications. Arriving there, Manilius ordered an immediate assault, against Scipio's advice. This initially went well, but the Romans advanced into an untenable position. When they attempted to withdraw, the Carthaginians counterattacked, inflicting heavy casualties. Scipio led 300 cavalrymen in a series of limited and well-disciplined charges and threats which caused the Carthaginians to pause long enough for most of the infantry to complete their retreat. That night Scipio led his cavalry back to rescue a trapped group of Romans. The Roman column retreated to its camp near Carthage, where a committee from the Senate had arrived to evaluate Scipio and Manilius' progress. Scipio's performance was prominent in their subsequent report. Scipio made contact with several of the leaders of Carthage's Numidian cavalry, then joined a second, better-planned expedition led by Manilius against Hasdrubal at Nepheris. Despite the greater forethought, the Romans made no progress, although one of the Numidians contacted by Scipio did defect to the Romans with 2,200 men. Manilius withdrew after the Romans ran out of food and Scipio led the Romans' new allies on a successful foraging expedition.
### 148 BC
The Romans elected two new consuls in 148 BC, but only one of them was sent to Africa: Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus; Lucius Hostilius Mancinus commanded the navy as his subordinate. He pulled back the close siege of Carthage to a looser blockade and attempted to mop up the other Carthaginian-supporting cities in the area. He failed: Neapolis surrendered and was subsequently sacked, but Aspis withstood assaults from both the Roman army and navy, while Hippo was fruitlessly besieged. A Carthaginian sortie from Hippo destroyed the Roman siege engines causing them to break off the campaign and go into winter quarters. Hasdrubal, already in charge of the Carthaginian field army, overthrew the civilian leadership of Carthage and took command himself. Carthage allied with Andriscus, a pretender to the Macedonian throne. Andriscus had invaded Roman Macedonia, defeated a Roman army, had himself crowned King Philip VI and sparked the Fourth Macedonian War.
### 147 BC
Scipio intended to stand in the 147 BC elections for the post of aedile, which was a natural progression for him. Aged 36 or 37, he was too young to stand as consul, for which by the Lex Villia the minimum age was 41. There was considerable political manoeuvring behind the scenes. Scipio and his partisans played on his successes over the previous two years and the fact that it was his adoptive grandfather, Scipio Africanus, who had sealed Roman victory in Africa in the Second Punic War. Public demand to appoint him as consul and so allow him to take charge of the African war, was so strong that the Senate put aside the age requirements for all posts for the year. Scipio was elected consul and appointed to sole command in Africa; usually theatres were allocated to the two consuls by lot. He was granted the usual right to conscript enough men to make up the numbers of the forces there and the unusual entitlement to enroll volunteers.
Scipio moved the Romans' main camp back to near Carthage, closely observed by a Carthaginian detachment of 8,000. He made a speech demanding tighter discipline and dismissed those soldiers he considered ill-disciplined or poorly motivated. He then led a successful night attack and broke into the city with 4,000 men. Panicked in the dark, the Carthaginian defenders, after an initial fierce resistance, fled. Scipio decided that his position would be indefensible once the Carthaginians reorganised themselves in daylight and so withdrew. Hasdrubal, horrified at the way the Carthaginian defences had collapsed, had Roman prisoners tortured to death on the walls, in sight of the Roman army. He was reinforcing the will to resist in the Carthaginian citizens; from this point, there could be no possibility of negotiation or even surrender. Some members of the city council denounced his actions and Hasdrubal had them too put to death and took full control of the city.
The renewed close siege cut off landward entry to the city, but a tight seaward interdiction was all but impossible with the naval technology of the time. Frustrated at the amount of food being shipped into the city, Scipio built an immense mole to cut off access to the harbour via blockade runners. The Carthaginians responded by cutting a new channel from their harbour to the sea. They had built a new fleet and once the channel was complete, the Carthaginians sailed out, taking the Romans by surprise. In the ensuing Battle of the Port of Carthage the Carthaginians held their own, but when withdrawing at the end of the day many of their ships were trapped against the city's sea wall and sunk or captured. The Romans now attempted to advance against the Carthaginian defences in the harbour area, eventually gaining control of the quay. Here, over several months, they constructed a brick structure as high as the city wall, which enabled up to 4,000 Romans to fire onto the Carthaginian ramparts from short range.
Once this feature was complete, Scipio detached a large force and led it against the Carthaginian field army at Nepheris. The Carthaginians, commanded by a Greek named Diogenes, had established a fortified camp for their winter quarters. Late in 147 BC Scipio directed an assault on the camp from several directions and overran it. Fleeing Carthaginians were pursued by Rome's mounted Numidian allies and few escaped. The town of Nepheris was then besieged and surrendered after three weeks. Most of the fortified positions still holding out in Carthage's hinterland now opened their gates.
### 146 BC
Scipio's position as the Roman commander in Africa was extended for a year in 146 BC. In the spring he launched a full-scale assault from the harbour area, which successfully breached the walls. Over six days, the Romans systematically worked their way through the residential part of the city, killing everyone they encountered and setting the buildings behind them on fire. On the last day Scipio agreed to accept prisoners, except for 900 Roman deserters in Carthaginian service, who fought on from the Temple of Eshmoun and burnt it down around themselves when all hope was gone. At this point, Hasdrubal surrendered to Scipio on the promise of his life and freedom. Hasdrubal's wife, watching from a rampart, then blessed Scipio, cursed her husband and walked into the temple with her children to burn to death.
50,000 Carthaginian prisoners were sold into slavery. The notion that Roman forces then sowed the city with salt is likely a 19th-century invention. Many of the religious items and cult-statues which Carthage had pillaged from Sicilian cities and temples over the centuries were returned with great ceremony.
## Aftermath
Rome was determined that the city of Carthage remain in ruins. The Senate despatched a ten-man commission and Scipio was ordered to carry out further demolitions. A curse was placed on anyone who might attempt to resettle the site in the future. The former site of the city was confiscated as ager publicus, public land. Scipio celebrated a triumph and took the agnomen "Africanus", as had his adoptive grandfather. Hasdrubal's fate is not known, although he had surrendered on the promise of a retirement to an Italian estate. The formerly Carthaginian territories were annexed by Rome and reconstituted to become the Roman province of Africa, with Utica as its capital. The province became a major source of grain and other food.
The Punic cities which had stood by Carthage to the end were forfeit to Rome as ager publicus, or, as in the case of Bizerte, were destroyed. Surviving cities were permitted to retain at least elements of their traditional system of government and culture. The Romans did not interfere in the locals' private lives and Punic culture, language and religion survived, and is known to modern scholars as "Neo-Punic civilization". The Punic language continued to be spoken in north Africa until the 7th century AD.
In 123 BC a reformist faction in Rome led by Gaius Gracchus was eager to redistribute land, including publicly held land. This included the site of Carthage and a controversial law was passed ordering the establishment of a new settlement there, called Junonia. Conservatives argued against the law and after its passage spread rumours that markers delimitating the new settlement had been dug up by wolves – a very poor omen. These rumours, and other political machinations, caused the plan to be scrapped. In 111 BC legislation repeated the injunction against any resettlement. A century after the war, Julius Caesar planned to rebuild Carthage as a Roman city, but little work was done. Augustus revived the concept in 29 BC and brought the plan to completion. Roman Carthage had become one of the main cities of Roman Africa by the time of the Empire.
Rome still exists as the capital of Italy; the ruins of Carthage lie 16 km (10 mi) east of modern Tunis on the North African coast. A symbolic peace treaty was signed by Ugo Vetere and Chedli Klibi, the mayors of Rome and modern Carthage, respectively, on 5 February 1985; 2,131 years after the war ended. As of 2020 the modern settlement of Carthage was a district of the city of Tunis.
## Notes, citations and sources
|
1,292,484 |
Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō
| 1,159,033,609 |
Light aircraft carrier of the Imperial Japanese Navy
|
[
"1931 ships",
"Aircraft carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy",
"Aircraft carriers sunk by aircraft",
"Maritime incidents in August 1942",
"Second Sino-Japanese War naval ships of Japan",
"Ships built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries",
"Ships of the Aleutian Islands campaign",
"Ships sunk by US aircraft",
"World War II aircraft carriers of Japan",
"World War II shipwrecks in the Pacific Ocean"
] |
Ryūjō (Japanese: 龍驤 "Prancing Dragon") was a light aircraft carrier built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the early 1930s. Small and lightly built in an attempt to exploit a loophole in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, she proved to be top-heavy and only marginally stable and was back in the shipyard for modifications to address those issues within a year of completion. With her stability improved, Ryūjō returned to service and was employed in operations during the Second Sino-Japanese War. During World War II, she provided air support for operations in the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies, where her aircraft participated in the Second Battle of the Java Sea. During the Indian Ocean raid in April 1942, the carrier attacked British merchant shipping with her guns and aircraft. Ryūjō next participated in the Battle of Dutch Harbor, the opening battle of the Aleutian Islands campaign, in June 1942. She was sunk by American carrier aircraft in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons on 24 August 1942.
## Design
Ryūjō was planned as a light carrier of around 8,000 metric tons (7,900 long tons) standard displacement to exploit a loophole in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 that carriers under 10,000 long tons (10,000 t) standard displacement were not regarded as "aircraft carriers". While Ryūjō was under construction, Article Three of the London Naval Treaty of 1930 closed the above-mentioned loophole; consequently, Ryūjō was the only light aircraft carrier of her type to be completed by Japan.
Ryūjō had a length of 179.9 meters (590 ft 3 in) overall. with a beam of 20.32 meters (66 ft 8 in) and a draft of 5.56 meters (18 ft 3 in). She displaced 8,000 metric tons (7,900 long tons) at standard load and 10,150 metric tons (9,990 long tons) at normal load. Her crew consisted of 600 officers and enlisted men.
To keep Ryūjō's weight to 8,000 metric tons, the hull was lightly built with no armor; some protective plating was added abreast the machinery spaces and magazines. She was also designed with only a single hangar, which would have left an extremely low profile (there being just 4.6 meters (15 ft 1 in) of freeboard amidships and 3.0 meters (9 ft 10 in) aft). Between the time the carrier was laid down in 1929 and launched in 1931, the Navy doubled her aircraft stowage requirement to 48 in order to give her a more capable air group. This necessitated the addition of a second hangar atop the first, raising freeboard to 14.9 meters (48 ft 11 in). Coupled with the ship's narrow beam, the consequent top-heaviness made her minimally stable in rough seas, despite the fitting of Sperry active stabilizers. This was a common flaw amongst many treaty-circumventing Japanese warships of her generation.
The Tomozuru Incident of 12 March 1934, in which a top-heavy torpedo boat capsized in heavy weather, caused the IJN to investigate the stability of all their ships, resulting in design changes to improve stability and increase hull strength. Ryūjō, already known to be only marginally stable, was promptly docked at the Kure Naval Arsenal for modifications that strengthened her keel and added ballast and shallow torpedo bulges to improve her stability. Her funnels were moved higher up the side of her hull and curved downward to keep the deck clear of smoke.
Shortly afterward, Ryūjō was one of many Japanese warships caught in a typhoon on 25 September 1935 while on maneuvers during the "Fourth Fleet Incident." The ship's bridge, flight deck and superstructure were damaged and the hangar was flooded. The forecastle was raised one deck and the bow was remodelled with more flare to improve the sea handling. After these modifications, the beam and draft increased to 20.78 meters (68 ft 2 in) and 7.08 meters (23 ft 3 in) respectively. The displacement also increased to 10,600 metric tons (10,400 long tons) at standard load and 12,732 metric tons (12,531 long tons) at normal load. The crew also grew to 924 officers and enlisted men.
### Machinery
The ship was fitted with two geared steam turbine sets with a total of 65,000 shaft horsepower (48,000 kW), each driving one propeller shaft, using steam provided by six Kampon water-tube boilers. Ryūjō had a designed speed of 29 knots (54 km/h; 33 mph), but reached 29.5 knots (54.6 km/h; 33.9 mph) during her sea trials from 65,270 shp (48,670 kW). The ship carried 2,490 long tons (2,530 t) of fuel oil, which gave her a range of 10,000 nautical miles (19,000 km; 12,000 mi) at 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph). The boiler uptakes were trunked to the ship's starboard side amidships and exhausted horizontally below flight deck level through two small funnels.
### Flight deck and hangars
Ryūjō was a flush-decked carrier without an island superstructure; the navigating and control bridge was located just under the forward lip of the flight deck in a long glassed-in "greenhouse", whilst the superstructure was set back 23.5 meters (77 ft 1 in) from the ship's stem, giving Ryūjō a distinctive open bow. The 156.5-meter (513 ft 5 in) flight deck was 23 meters (75 ft 6 in) wide and extended well beyond the aft end of the superstructure, supported by a pair of pillars. Six transverse arrestor wires were installed on the flight deck and were modernised in 1936 to stop a 6,000 kg (13,000 lb) aircraft. The ship's hangars were both 102.4 meters (335 ft 11 in) long and 18.9 meters (62 ft 0 in) wide, and had an approximate area of 3,871 square metres (41,667 sq ft). Between them, they gave the ship the capacity to store 48 aircraft, but only 37 could be operated at one time. After the Fourth Fleet incident, Ryūjō's bridge and the leading edge of the flight deck were rounded off to make them more streamlined. This reduced the length of the flight deck by 2 meters (6 ft 7 in).
Aircraft were transported between the hangars and the flight deck by two elevators; the forward platform measured 15.7 by 11.1 meters (51.5 ft × 36.4 ft) and the rear 10.8 by 8.0 meters (35.4 ft × 26.2 ft). The small rear elevator became a problem as the IJN progressively fielded larger and more modern carrier aircraft. Of all the aircraft in front-line service in 1941, only the Nakajima B5N "Kate" torpedo bomber would fit, when positioned at an angle with its wings folded. This effectively made Ryūjō a single-elevator carrier and considerably hindered transfer of aircraft in and out of the hangars for rearming and refueling during combat operations.
### Armament
As completed, Ryūjō's primary anti-aircraft (AA) armament comprised six twin-gun mounts equipped with 40-caliber 12.7-centimeter Type 89 dual-purpose guns mounted on projecting sponsons, three on either side of the carrier's hull. When firing at surface targets, the guns had a range of 14,700 meters (16,100 yd); they had a maximum ceiling of 9,440 meters (30,970 ft) at their maximum elevation of +90 degrees. Their maximum rate of fire was 14 rounds a minute, but their sustained rate of fire was around eight rounds per minute. Twenty-four anti-aircraft (AA) Type 93 13.2 mm Hotchkiss machine guns were also fitted, in twin and quadruple mounts. Their effective range against aircraft was 700–1,500 meters (770–1,640 yd). The cyclic rate was adjustable between 425 and 475 rounds per minute, but the need to change 30-round magazines reduced the effective rate to 250 rounds per minute.
During the carrier's 1934–1936 refit, two of the 12.7-centimeter (5.0 in) mountings were exchanged for two twin-gun mounts for license-built Hotchkiss 25 mm Type 96 light AA guns, resulting in a reduction of approximately 60 long tons (61 t) of top-weight that improved the ship's overall stability. This was the standard Japanese light AA gun during World War II, but it suffered from severe design shortcomings that rendered it a largely ineffective weapon. According to historian Mark Stille, the weapon had many faults including an inability to "handle high-speed targets because it could not be trained or elevated fast enough by either hand or power, its sights were inadequate for high-speed targets, [and] it possessed excessive vibration and muzzle blast." These 25-millimeter (0.98 in) guns had an effective range of 1,500–3,000 meters (1,600–3,300 yd), and an effective ceiling of 5,500 meters (18,000 ft) at an elevation of +85 degrees. The maximum effective rate of fire was only between 110 and 120 rounds per minute because of the need to frequently change the fifteen-round magazines. The machine guns were replaced during a brief refit in April–May 1942 with six triple-mount 25-millimeter (0.98 in) AA guns.
## Construction and service
Following the Japanese ship-naming conventions for aircraft carriers, Ryūjō was named "Prancing Dragon". The ship was laid down at the Mitsubishi's Yokohama shipyard on 26 November 1929. She was launched on 2 April 1931, towed to Yokosuka Naval Arsenal on 25 April for fitting out, and commissioned on 9 May 1933 with Captain Toshio Matsunaga in command. While training in mid-1933, her initial air group consisted of nine Mitsubishi B1M2 (Type 13) torpedo bombers, plus three spares, and three A1N1 (Type 3) fighters, plus two spares. Matsunaga was relieved by Captain Torao Kuwabara on 20 October. After the Tomozuru Incident, the ship was reconstructed from 26 May to 20 August 1934.
Captain Ichiro Ono assumed command on 15 November 1934 and Ryūjō became the flagship of Rear Admiral Hideho Wada's First Carrier Division. The following month the ship was chosen to evaluate dive-bombing tactics using six Nakajima E4N2-C Type 90 reconnaissance aircraft, six Yokosuka B3Y1 Type 92 torpedo bombers, and a dozen A2N1 Type 90 fighters. The reconnaissance aircraft proved to be unsuitable after several months' testing. Ryūjō participated in the Combined Fleet Maneuvers of 1935 where she was attached to the IJN Fourth Fleet. The fleet was caught in a typhoon on 25 September and the ship was moderately damaged. Ryūjō arrived at Kure on 11 October 1935 for repairs, modifications, and a refit that lasted until 31 May 1936. On 31 October Ono was relieved by Captain Shun'ichi Kira.
In mid-1936, the ship was used to evaluate a dozen Aichi D1A dive bombers and dive-bombing tactics. She also embarked at that time 24 A4N1 fighters, plus four and eight spare aircraft respectively. In September, Ryūjō resumed her role as flagship of First Carrier Division, now commanded by Rear Admiral Saburō Satō. Her air group now consisted of a mixture of B3Y1 torpedo bombers, D1A1 dive bombers and A2N fighters, but her torpedo bombers were transferred after fleet maneuvers in October demonstrated effective dive bombing tactics. Captain Katsuo Abe assumed command of the ship on 16 November.
The First Carrier Division arrived off Shanghai on 13 August 1937 to support operations of the Japanese Army in China. Her aircraft complement consisted of 12 A4N fighters (plus four spares) and 15 D1A dive bombers. The dive bombers attacked targets in and near Shanghai. The Japanese fighters had their first aerial engagement on 22 August when four A4Ns surprised 18 Nationalist Curtiss Hawk III fighters and claimed to have shot down six without loss. The following day, four A4Ns claimed to have shot down nine Chinese fighters without loss to themselves. The carriers returned to Sasebo at the beginning of September to resupply before arriving off the South China coast on 21 September to attack Chinese forces near Canton. Nine fighters from Ryūjō escorted a raid on the city and claimed six of the defending fighters. While escorting another raid later that day, the Japanese pilots claimed five aircraft shot down and one probably shot down. The dive bombers attacked targets near Canton until the ship sailed to the Shanghai area on 3 October. Her air group was flown ashore on 6 October to support Japanese forces near Shanghai and Nanking. Ryūjō returned home in November and briefly became a training ship before she was assigned to Rear Admiral Tomoshige Samejima's Second Carrier Division.
In February 1938 the ship replaced her A4N biplanes with nine Mitsubishi A5M "Claude" monoplane fighters. The division supported Japanese operations in Southern China in March–April and again in October. Captain Kiichi Hasegawa assumed command on 15 November 1939. Ryūjō was given a refit that lasted from December 1939 through January 1940 and became a training ship until November when she became the flagship of Rear Admiral Kakuji Kakuta's Third Carrier Division. Hasegawa was relieved by Captain Ushie Sugimoto on 21 June. The ship's air group then consisted of 18 Nakajima B5N torpedo bombers and 16 A5M4 fighters. When the First Air Fleet was formed on 10 April 1941, Ryūjō became flagship of the Fourth Carrier Division.
### World War II
The ship's assignment at the beginning of the Pacific War was to support the invasion of the Philippines, initially by attacking the American naval base at Davao, Mindanao, on the morning of 8 December. Her air group had not changed, but four of each type of aircraft were spares. Ryūjō's initial airstrike consisted of 13 B5Ns escorted by nine A5Ms with a smaller airstrike later in the day by two B5Ns and three A5Ms. They accomplished little, destroying two Consolidated PBY seaplanes on the ground for the loss of one B5N and one A5M. The ship covered the landing at Davao on 20 December and her B5Ns attacked a British oil tanker south of Davao. In January 1942 her aircraft supported Japanese operations in the Malay Peninsula.
In mid-February 1942, Ryūjō's aircraft attacked ships evacuating from Singapore, claiming eight ships damaged, three burnt, and four sunk. They also covered convoys carrying troops to Sumatra. The ship was unsuccessfully attacked by several Bristol Blenheim light bombers of No. 84 Squadron RAF on 14 February. The following day two waves of B5Ns, totaling 13 aircraft, attacked the British heavy cruiser Exeter, but managed only to damage the ship's Supermarine Walrus seaplane. Follow-on attacks the same day were also unsuccessful. Two days later, B5Ns destroyed , a Dutch destroyer that had run aground in the Gaspar Strait and been abandoned on 14 February. The carrier sailed to Saigon, French Indochina, the next day and arrived on 20 February. A week later she was assigned to cover the convoy taking troops to Jakarta, Java. Her aircraft participated in the Second Battle of the Java Sea on 1 March and six B5Ns sank the American destroyer Pope after it had been abandoned by its crew. Six other B5Ns bombed the port of Semarang, possibly setting one merchantman on fire.
Ryūjō arrived in Singapore on 5 March and the ship supported operations in Sumatra and escorted convoys to Burma and the Andaman Islands for the rest of the month. On 1 April, while the 1st Air Fleet was starting its raid in the Indian Ocean, Malay Force, consisting of Ryūjō, six cruisers, and four destroyers, left Burma on a mission to destroy merchant shipping in the Bay of Bengal. B5Ns damaged one freighter on 5 April before the force split into three groups. Ryūjō's aircraft bombed the small ports of Cocanada and Vizagapatam on the southeastern coast of India the next day, doing little damage, in addition to claiming two ships sunk and six more damaged during the day. The carrier and her escorts, the light cruiser Yura and the destroyer Yūgiri, claimed to have sunk three more ships by gunfire. All together, Malay Force sank 19 ships totaling almost 100,000 gross register tons (GRT), before reuniting on 7 April and arriving at Singapore on 11 April. A week later, her B5Ns were detached for torpedo training and the ship arrived at Kure on 23 April for a brief refit.
The newly commissioned carrier Jun'yō joined Carrier Division 4, under the command of Kakuta, with Ryūjō on 3 May 1942. They formed the core of the 2nd Carrier Strike Force, part of the Northern Force, tasked to attack the Aleutian Islands, an operation planned to seize several of the islands to provide advance warning in case of an American attack from the Aleutians down the Kurile Islands while the main body of the American fleet was occupied defending Midway. Ryūjō's air group now consisted of 12 A6M2 Zeros and 18 B5Ns, plus two spares of each type. The ship transferred to Mutsu Bay on 25 May and then to Paramushiro on 1 June before departing the same day for the Aleutians.
At dawn on 3 June, she launched 9 B5Ns, escorted by 6 Zeros, to attack Dutch Harbor on Unalaska Island. One B5N crashed on takeoff but 6 of the B5Ns and all of the Zeros were able to make it through the bad weather, destroying two PBYs and inflicting significant damage on the oil storage tanks and barracks. A second airstrike was launched later in the day to attack a group of destroyers discovered by aircraft from the first attack, but they failed to find the targets. One Zero from Ryūjō from the second strike was damaged by a Curtiss P-40 and crash landed on the island of Akutan. The aircraft, later dubbed the Akutan Zero, remained largely intact and was later salvaged by the U.S. Navy and test flown. On the following day, the two carriers launched another airstrike, consisting of 15 Zeros, 11 D3As, and 6 B5Ns, which successfully bombed Dutch Harbor. Shortly after the aircraft were launched, the Americans attacked the carriers, but failed to inflict any damage. A Martin B-26 Marauder bomber and a PBY were shot down by Zeros, and a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber was shot down by flak during the attack.
Ryūjō arrived back at Mutsu Bay on 24 June, and departed for the Aleutians four days later to cover the second reinforcement convoy to Attu and Kiska Islands and remained in the area until 7 July in case of an American counterattack. She arrived at Kure on 13 July for a refit and was transferred to Carrier Division 2 a day later.
#### Battle of the Eastern Solomons
The American landings on Guadalcanal and Tulagi on 7 August caught the Japanese by surprise. The next day, Ryūjō was transferred to Carrier Division 1 and departed for Truk on 16 August together with the other two carriers of the division, Shōkaku and Zuikaku. Her air group consisted of 24 Zeros and nine B5N2s. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet, ordered Truk to be bypassed and the fleet refueled at sea after an American carrier was spotted near the Solomon Islands on 21 August. At 01:45 on 24 August, Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo, commander of the Mobile Force, ordered Ryūjō and the heavy cruiser Tone, escorted by two destroyers, detached to move in advance of the troop convoy bound for Guadalcanal and to attack the Allied air base at Henderson Field if no carriers were spotted. This Detached Force was commanded by Rear Admiral Chūichi Hara in Tone.
Ryūjō launched two small airstrikes, totaling 6 B5Ns and 15 Zeros, beginning at 12:20 once the Diversionary Force was 200 nautical miles (370 km; 230 mi) north of Lunga Point. Four Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters from Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-223 on combat air patrol (CAP) near Henderson Field spotted the incoming Japanese aircraft around 14:20 and alerted the defenders. Ten more Wildcats from VMF-223 and VMF-212 scrambled, as well as 2 United States Army Air Corps Bell P-400s from the 67th Fighter Squadron in response. Nine of the Zeros strafed the airfield while the B5Ns bombed it with 60-kilogram (132 lb) bombs to little effect. The Americans claimed to have shot down 19 aircraft, but only three Zeros and three B5Ns were lost, with another B5N forced to crash-land. Only three Wildcats were shot down in turn.
Around 14:40, the Detached Force was spotted again by several search aircraft from the carrier USS Enterprise; the Japanese ships did not immediately spot the Americans. They launched three Zeros for a combat air patrol at 14:55, three minutes before two of the searching Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers narrowly missed Ryūjō 150 meters (164 yd) astern with four 500-pound (227 kg) bombs. Two more Zeros reinforced the patrol shortly after 15:00, just in time to intercept two more searching Avengers, shooting down one. In the meantime, the carrier USS Saratoga had launched an airstrike against the Detached Force in the early afternoon that consisted of 31 Douglas SBD Dauntlesses and eight Avengers; the long range precluded fighter escort. They found the carrier shortly afterward and attacked. They hit Ryūjō three times with 1,000-pound (454 kg) bombs and one torpedo; the torpedo hit flooded the starboard engine and boiler rooms. No aircraft from either Ryūjō or Saratoga were shot down in the attack.
The bomb hits set the carrier on fire and she took on a list from the flooding caused by the torpedo hit. Ryūjō turned north at 14:08, but her list continued to increase even after the fires were put out. The progressive flooding disabled her machinery and caused her to stop at 14:20. The order to abandon ship was given at 15:15 and the destroyer Amatsukaze moved alongside to rescue the crew. The ships were bombed several times by multiple B-17s without effect before Ryūjō capsized about 17:55 at coordinates with the loss of seven officers and 113 crewmen. Fourteen aircraft that she had dispatched on raids returned shortly after Ryūjō sank and circled over the force until they were forced to ditch. Seven pilots were rescued.
|
1,173,744 |
1080° Snowboarding
| 1,168,187,194 |
1998 video game
|
[
"1080° (video game series)",
"1998 video games",
"D.I.C.E. Award for Sports Game of the Year winners",
"Multiplayer and single-player video games",
"Nintendo 64 games",
"Nintendo 64-only games",
"Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development games",
"Nintendo Switch Online games",
"Snowboarding video games",
"Video games developed in Japan",
"Virtual Console games for Wii",
"Virtual Console games for Wii U"
] |
is a snowboarding video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 in 1998. In the game, the player controls one of five snowboarders from a third-person perspective, using a combination of buttons to jump and perform tricks over eight levels.
1080° was announced in November 1997 and developed over the course of nine months; it garnered critical acclaim and won an Interactive Achievement Award from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. 1080° sold over two million units. A sequel, 1080° Avalanche, was released for the GameCube in November 2003. The game was re-released in 2008 and 2016 for the Wii and Wii U Virtual Console, and is set to be re-released on the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack in 2023.
## Gameplay
Players control snowboarders in one of several modes. 1080° has two trick modes (trick attack and contest), three race modes (race, time attack, and 2 players), a training mode, and an options mode. The objective of the game is either to arrive quickly at a level's finish line or to receive maximum points for trick combinations.
In 1080°'s two trick modes, trick attack and contest, players accrue points from completed tricks. In contest mode, players perform tricks and snowboard past flags for points. Trick attack mode requires players to perform a series of tricks throughout a designated level. The game features 24 tricks and 5 secret tricks, all of which are performed by using a combination of circular positions of the control stick, the R button, the Z button and the B button; point values are allocated based on complexity, combos, and required time. The two types of tricks are grab tricks, in which the board is grabbed in a specific way, or spin tricks, in which the snowboarder spins the board a certain number of degrees. The 1080° spin requires nine actions, the most of any trick in the game.
1080° has three race modes; in these modes, victory can be achieved by taking separate routes within a course and balancing the snowboarder after a jump to avoid speed loss. Tricks are scored in race modes, but do not count toward victory. In match race mode, the player competes in a series of races against AI-controlled snowboarders. The game times the player throughout the level and players receive a damage meter which fills if the snowboarder falls down or is knocked over. The difficulty level in match races can be set to normal, hard, or expert, adjusting the complexity and number of races. If the player fails at defeating an AI competitor, they must retire. The player is given three chances to beat the computer before the game is over.
Players may initially choose from five snowboarding characters: two from Japan, and one each from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Each snowboarder has different abilities and is suited for different levels and modes, since each has varying statistics in fields such as technique, speed, and weight. Three additional snowboarders are unlocked by completing certain game levels and modes. Eight snowboards are initially available for every character, and one additional snowboard may be unlocked later in the game. Each board also excels in different situations, since each has different strengths in categories such as balance and edge control.
## Development and release
1080°'s release was announced on 21 November 1997 at Nintendo's Space World trade show; the game's working title had previously been Vertical Edge Snowboarding. 1080° was one of several snowboarding games released for the Nintendo 64 in 1998, others being Big Mountain 2000 and Snowboard Kids. Before the game's release, journalists were able to play 1080° at the January 1998 Nintendo Gamers' Summit.
1080° was directed by Masamachi Abe and Misthuro Tanako, programmed by Englishmen Giles Goddard and Colin Reed, developed and published by Nintendo, and produced by Shigeru Miyamoto. Abe had previously directed Tekken 3 for Namco. Goddard had previously programmed the Mario face in Super Mario 64, which was released two years prior to critical acclaim and was a huge commercial success, while Reed had programmed Stunt Race FX. According to Miyamoto, the game "came about because I like skiing. I was thinking about making a skiing game after completing Wave Race [64]. However, the current trend seems to be toward snowboarding. With snowboarding, it seems that you can go places that you can't with skis; for example, in between trees."
Development took place in Nintendo headquarters in Kyoto, Japan. When developing 1080°, Goddard and Reed used a technique called "skinning" to eliminate joints between the polygons composing the characters. Their programming used a combination of standard animation and inverse kinematics, creating characters whose appearance during collisions is affected by what object is hit, what direction the collision occurs in, and the speed at which the collision takes place. All of the characters' moves were created with motion capture. Tommy Hilfiger outfits and Lamar snowboards appear throughout 1080° as product placement. 1080°'s soundtrack of "techno and rappy beats" with "thrashy, foozed-out vocals" was composed by Kenta Nagata.
1080°'s development took place from April or May 1997 into early 1998. The game was released on 28 February 1998 in Japan and on 1 April in North America. Nintendo prioritized 1080° for Japanese release over other Nintendo 64 games because they wanted it out while there was still snow. Nintendo delayed the game's European release because they hoped to boost sales with a winter release; 1080° was eventually released on 30 November, 1998 in Europe and the PAL region.
## Reception
1080° Snowboarding received "generally favorable reviews", just two points shy of "universal acclaim", according to review aggregator website Metacritic. In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 31 out of 40. Nintendo Power gave the Japanese import a favorable review, over a month before it was released Stateside. It was called "one of the best values in both sports and racing gaming" by Josh Smith of GameSpot. 1080° Snowboarding has been perceived to be a leader among snowboarding titles at the time. Edge hailed it as the "most convincing video game emulation of the snowboarding experience so far" with an "atmosphere of sobriety" unlike any other Nintendo game at the time.
The game's graphics were of the highest quality for the Nintendo 64 at the time. Smith praised general aspects of the game's graphics such as their crispness, detail, smoothness, and lack of polygon dropout. Reviewers praised the game's camera use, the game's "very solid" physics model, the impression of racers' speed, and the game's snow effects (sun reflected in the snow as appropriate, and fluffy snow and packed snow appeared and behaved differently). Graphical faults included occasional pop-up, misplaced shadows, and lag when racers passed through on-track trees; these problems were generally identified as minor.
Although writing a positive review, Edge found faults in the game's AI, saying the game suffered from "cheating" CPU opponents. They criticized the AI's simplicity and ability to quickly catch up to the player near the end of a race; they also noted the AI's "limited series of predetermined routes" and the possibility of a player learning where and when an AI falls over, "offering an opportunity to pass [the computer], but conveying little satisfaction with it". Edge also said the PAL release delay "is frankly ludicrous". They believed that, due to Nintendo's slump of noteworthy releases, "any quality title is likely to top the charts with little difficulty".
Next Generation said that 1080° Snowboarding set the standard for an entire genre. Kevin Cheung of Hyper gave the game 90%: "There is little else more to say save that 1080 captures the true essence of the thrill of snowboarding. [...] Just as Waverace [sic] brought a new dimension to water-based racing, 1080 brings N64 owners an equally innovative game". GamePro said that the game was "the kind of great game that's worth snapping up as soon as it's out."
Writing for AllGame, Shawn Sackenheim considered the "highly technical" control scheme of 1080° Snowboarding one of the game's strengths despite its initial difficulty. Alex Huhtala of Computer and Video Games positively reviewed the control scheme, but disagreed on its difficulty, noting "the controls have been implemented so brilliantly that you're able to play perfectly well with just one hand on the stick and Z button". GameSpot called the game's control "thoroughly involving" and said that "[t]he crouch move alone – which makes for supertight turns – makes this fun to play". The music was also generally praised, with Matt Casamassina of IGN calling it "a shining example of what can be achieved on the format" and Sackenheim calling it "one of the best N64 soundtracks to date". Sackenheim also praised the game's sound effects.
In a retrospective review by the Official Nintendo Magazine in 2006, Steve Jarratt commented that 1080° Snowboarding "boasted the best video game representation of snow" and was complemented by "swooshy" sound effects. Positive comments were also made about handling and the quality of the multiplayer. In summary, Jarratt believed "this was a straight-up snowboarder, stunt-free but fast and fun". The magazine also ranked it the 87th best game available on Nintendo platforms. The staff felt it was the most realistic snowboarding game ever made.
1080° Snowboarding won the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' Console Sports Game of the Year award at the 2nd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. It was also nominated for Best Nintendo 64 Game at the 1998 CNET Gamecenter Awards, which went to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
PC Data, which tracked sales in the United States, reported that 1080° Snowboarding sold 817,529 units and earned \$40.9 million in revenues by the end of 1998. This made it the country's seventh-best-selling Nintendo 64 release of the year. The game ultimately sold 1,230,000 units in the United States, and over 23,000 in Japan. It did not, however, match the success of the developers' first game, Wave Race 64 which sold 1,950,000 units in the United States and 154,000 in Japan. 1080° Snowboarding was re-released on the Wii's Virtual Console service in 2008.
## Sequel
1080° Avalanche, a sequel to 1080° Snowboarding, was released for the GameCube in 2003. Greg Kasavin of GameSpot gave the sequel a harsher critical reception due to "frame rate issues and limited gameplay".
|
33,304,947 |
Melville Island (Nova Scotia)
| 1,127,145,050 |
Small peninsula in Nova Scotia, Canada
|
[
"Internment camps in Canada",
"Landforms of Halifax County, Nova Scotia",
"Landforms of Halifax, Nova Scotia",
"Peninsulas of Nova Scotia",
"Prisoner-of-war camps in Canada",
"Quarantine facilities in Canada",
"World War I internment camps",
"World War I prisoner-of-war camps"
] |
Melville Island is a small peninsula in Nova Scotia, Canada, located in the Northwest Arm of Halifax Harbour, west of Deadman's Island. It is part of the Halifax Regional Municipality. The land is rocky, with thin, acidic soil, but supports a limited woodland habitat.
The site was discovered by Europeans in the 17th century, though it was likely earlier explored by Indigenous peoples. It was initially used for storehouses before being purchased by the British, who built a prisoner-of-war camp to hold captives from the Napoleonic Wars and later the War of 1812. The burial ground for prisoners was on the adjacent Deadman's Island.
Later, Melville Island was used as a receiving depot for Black refugees escaping slavery in the United States, then as a quarantine hospital for immigrants arriving from Europe (particularly Ireland). It briefly served as a recruitment centre for the British Foreign Legion during the Crimean War, and was then sold to the British for use as a military prison. In 1907 the land was granted to the Canadian government, which used it to detain German and Austro-Hungarian nationals during the First World War. During the Second World War, prisoners were sent to McNabs Island instead, and ammunition depots were kept on Melville Island.
The peninsula now houses the clubhouse and marina of the Armdale Yacht Club. Melville Island has been the subject of a number of cultural works, most of which concern its use as a prison.
## Geography
Melville Island is part of the Halifax Regional Municipality, on the southeast coast of Nova Scotia. The peninsula lies on the eastern boundary of Melville Cove in the Northwest Arm, an inlet between the Halifax Peninsula and Mainland Halifax. It has a total area of approximately 2,000 square metres (22,000 sq ft). Melville Island is 200 metres (660 ft) west of Deadman's Island, and southeast of Regatta Point. The peninsula lies on a fracture zone trending northwest–southeast, and is located at the border between the Halifax Slate Formation and a granite-based formation. There is evidence of glacial scouring in the area. The surrounding seabed ranges from gravel to muddy gravel, and the shore is rocky.
The water surrounding Melville Island is salty and ranges from 15 °C (59 °F) in summer to partially or completely frozen in winter. The water is polluted by sewage discharges from Halifax and is considered heavily contaminated. Water colour ranges from olive brown to greenish black, with little current. The water depth around Melville Island is 4.5 to 10.5 metres (15 to 34 ft).
The peninsula features thin and acidic soil, and hosts plants like witherod, Indian pear, Labrador tea, wintergreen, and blueberry shrubs. It is a woodland area, with birch, tamarack, maple, oak, beech, and white pine trees. Given the development of the land by the Armdale Yacht Club, plant growth is now largely limited to the hill on which the main clubhouse sits; most of the peninsula was paved in 1971. Fish caught from Melville Island include cod and mackerel. Local birds include grebes, loons, and alcids.
There is no weather monitoring station on Melville Island (the closest is the Halifax dockyards); however, as with most of the surrounding area, Melville has a humid continental climate heavily influenced by the water temperature in Halifax Harbour. Average air temperatures range from −4.4 °C (24.1 °F) in January to 18.9 °C (66.0 °F) in August. It receives about 1,500 mm (59 in) of precipitation per year, and may receive snow from October through April. Though the area is fairly sheltered, it is subject to damage from hurricanes and other storms, notably Hurricane Juan in 2003.
## History
### Early use
Though the Halifax area was settled by aboriginals, particularly the Mi'kmaq people, as early as 7000 BC, there is no archaeological evidence of native habitation on Melville Island prior to the arrival of the Europeans. The first Europeans to reach the land were likely French traders and missionaries in the 17th century. Halifax was founded by the British in 1749. The first documented use of Melville Island was by Robert Cowie and John Aubony, who obtained a Crown grant in 1752 to allow them to build a storehouse. After Cowie's death in 1781, John Butler Kelly purchased what was then known as Cowie's Island and quickly resold it in 1784 to James Kavanagh, the head of a prosperous family fishery, for £65.
### French Revolutionary Wars
After the 1793 beheading of Louis XVI sparked a war between Britain and France (see the French Revolutionary Wars), Nova Scotia Governor John Wentworth rented Kavanagh's Island to house 600 French prisoners that had been captured on St. Pierre and Miquelon. The commander of the Halifax garrison, Brigadier General James Ogilvie, objected to the plan, and instead housed the prisoners at Cornwallis Barracks in Halifax. Several prisoners were able to escape from the makeshift prison, and the rest were sent to Guernsey in June 1794.
In August 1794, a French ship captured in St. Domingo arrived in Halifax. A plan to house these prisoners in Halifax met with opposition from the citizenry because of a fear of "fever"; indeed, surgeon John Halliburton suggested that if the plan was carried out, "the popular would burn down [the housing] with the sick prisoners inside". Halliburton rented Kavanagh's Island, likely on the suggestion of Governor John Wentworth, and by June 1795 had sent 70 sick and wounded prisoners to its makeshift prison hospital. The other prisoners were kept on the prison ship La Felix. Sixteen soldiers of the Royal Nova Scotia Regiment acted as guards for the hospital beginning in 1796. Because of overcrowding aboard La Felix, some of its prisoners were allowed to live in Halifax, where some created such a disturbance that they were sent to Kavanagh's Island to be imprisoned. In 1801, the Treaty of Amiens resulted in most of the prisoners being returned to France, and the site was abandoned.
### Napoleonic Wars (1803–1811)
The site was formally leased for prisoner housing in 1803 after fifteen French fishermen, three surgeons, and 188 seamen were brought to Halifax as prisoners during the Napoleonic Wars. Though many of these prisoners were later sent to England or Bermuda, one of the surgeons (Antoine Noel) was hired to care for the prisoners, while at least sixteen other prisoners were able to escape. Melville was purchased for £1000 in 1804 (£89,970 as of 2020) by Robert Murray, appointed by the British Admiralty as prison agent; he was replaced shortly thereafter by John MacKellar. At the time, the facility had a maximum capacity of 200 prisoners. The makeshift prison was noted for discipline problems.
The land was officially renamed Melville Island in late 1804 or early 1805 in honour of Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville (who at the time had just been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty). A wooden barracks-style military prison was constructed to house common prisoners, the cornerstone of which was laid in 1808 and is today preserved as a monument, while a multi-storey building was designed to hold officers. As no exchange system was established with the French, the prison quickly became overcrowded. Some Spanish prisoners were also housed in the prison at this time.
Upon their arrival on Melville, prisoners had their name and other details recorded in an entry book. Inmates were given yellow clothing that clearly identified them as prisoners of war, and were supplied with provisions of beef, bread, potatoes and salt from a local contractor "reputed to own most of the livestock in the region". Some officers were allowed to send trade goods to Halifax, or even work in the city as domestic servants or handymen. There were also prisoner-run shops and a "small town fair" on Melville Island, frequented by British officers and residents of Halifax. Other prisoner pursuits included prison lotteries, model shipbuilding, beer-brewing, fishing, and making molasses candy. Some prisoners were known to have pets or keep chickens.
In late 1805, a group of officers broke parole and escaped; this led the garrison captain to restrict the purchase of prisoner-made goods as a means of punishment and enforcing discipline. More serious punishments included flogging or being confined to a barred hole in the prison cellar, known as the "Black Hole", with only bread and water. One of the prisoners, Pierre Poulin, stabbed another to death in April 1805, and was tried and hanged for murder in Halifax. The prisoners also maintained their own Grand Council (Grand Conseil) with which to impose discipline, though with a different focus than the British: anyone who disclosed a planned escape attempt to the guards was subject to being stoned to death (though historian Brian Cuthbertson disputes the likelihood of this claim). Escapes and attempts were frequent, and attempted escapees were regarded "with high esteem" by the other prisoners. Before 1812, approximately 130 prisoners, including 25 officers, escaped, of whom only 11 were recaptured despite advertised rewards in local newspapers. Many others were either sent to prisons in England or the West Indies, or were released after pledging allegiance to the British Crown. Approximately 1535 French prisoners were incarcerated at Melville between 1803 and 1813, and an unknown number were held during Napoleon's Hundred Days. Sixty-six Frenchmen are known to have died in the prison, ten of whom were prisoners from the Hundred Days. Nine Spanish prisoners also died during this period.
### War of 1812
The War of 1812 brought an influx of American prisoners to Melville Island; up to 1800 at a time were housed in its barracks or on a nearby 350-person prison ship Magnet. Most of the French prisoners were released or paroled to make room for the Americans, who were seen as more of a risk. David Stickney was the first recorded American prisoner, arriving on 4 July 1812. Early in the war, many Americans were exchanged for British prisoners in Boston or Salem, Massachusetts, in an arrangement known as a "cartel"; 1981 of the captives taken before October 1812 were thus exchanged, while another seventeen, accused of killing a Canadian farmer and raping his wife, were sent to England and imprisoned. African-American captives were never considered for exchange, and were instead commonly released under the 1807 Abolition Act.
By the end of 1812, maps of the peninsula showed a marked increase in buildings: a two-story common prison, a small hospital, officers' quarters, a gunner's house, a turnkey store, fuel sheds, the agent's office and guard house, a bell house, nine sentry boxes, and four oceanside outhouses. Despite this, the facility was severely overcrowded, a problem compounded by attempts at segregating the remaining French prisoners and the few African-Americans from the majority white American population. 2078 prisoners were recorded by the end of 1812, including 1412 privateers and 572 merchant seamen. More than 3000 arrived over the next two years, including nearly 1000 soldiers captured in the Niagara area.
Accounts of prison life vary: Cuthbertson says that the prisoners were "reportedly well treated" but prisoner complaints suggested they were "wretched indeed". Because of the crowded conditions, "the authorities did everything they could to keep the prisoners quiet," including lying to them. Captured privateers were sent to England in large numbers "to harass and distress that description of prisoners". All letters sent to and by prisoners were read. Residents of the Melville prison barracks were lice-infested and slept in tier-hung hammocks (first three, and later four tiers), and their activities were more restricted than those of earlier French prisoners. A strict cleaning regimen was observed in an attempt to promote sanitary conditions, and prisoners could be sent to solitary confinement for uncleanliness. Rations were considered "robust": prisoners were given 0.45 kilograms (1 lb) each of bread and beef and a gill (0.1421 litres) of peas daily.
In October 1812, John Mitchell was appointed as an "American agent" to oversee the treatment of the American prisoners at Melville and to arrange prisoner exchanges. He gave the Americans coffee, sugar, potatoes, tobacco, newspapers, and soap, and also provided money for other purchases. Mitchell was responsible for buying clothing, but lacked the funds to meet demand: in late 1813, almost 1000 of the prisoners were shoeless, and many more had no jackets. Staff at the prison hospital attributed a tuberculosis outbreak to "want of comfortable clothing". Though Mitchell visited Melville Island regularly, he was primarily concerned with speaking to the officers, not the common prisoners. Mitchell was removed in October 1814 in retaliation for the treatment of the British prisoner agent, Thomas Barclay, by the United States government.
Despite the conditions in the prison, the Americans continued the French tradition of establishing shops within the prison. Goods sold included cigars and smuggled rum. Gambling was a popular pastime, particularly backgammon and other dice games, as well as dancing, singing, and storytelling. One prisoner was able to counterfeit Spanish coins, which found their way into the Halifax economy. On Sundays, church services were conducted and visitors were allowed, though many visiting Haligonians were United Empire Loyalists who came "to gratify their eyes ... with sight of what they called 'rebels' ".
The 320 American survivors of the capture of USS Chesapeake in 1813 were interned on Melville Island and their ship, renamed HMS Chesapeake, was used to ferry prisoners from Melville to England's Dartmoor Prison. Many officers were paroled to Halifax, but some began a riot at a performance of a patriotic song about Chesapeake's defeat. Parole restrictions were tightened: beginning in 1814, paroled officers were required to attend a monthly muster on Melville Island, and those who violated their parole were confined to the prison. After foiled escape plots in 1813 and 1814, fears of a mass escape led to increased security and a 600-prisoner transport to England. Around this time, Lieutenant William Miller, who had been in charge of the prisoners, was replaced by Captain J. Crochet; Miller had been noted for his rudeness, including one occasion when he told the prisoners to "die and be damned, as there is one hundred and fifty acres of land to bury you in, God damn you." He had also been accused of cruelty by American newspapers, though some prisoners defended him and the veracity of the media claims is questionable.
By the decommissioning, over 10,000 French, Spanish and American prisoners had been held at the prison. The majority were Americans: there were 8,148 recorded US prisoners, 3,542 of whom were privateers from the 92 such ships brought to Halifax.
Of the American prisoners held on Melville Island during the war, 195 died, mostly from fevers and pneumonia – a death rate of two per cent. Prisoners at Melville Island had a lower death rate than most British soldiers serving at frontier posts in North American and the prison's conditions were better than many those endured by British prisoners in POW camps in the United States. Most of the French and American dead were buried on nearby Deadman's Island. James Brooke suggests a burial rate of one per week. The war ended in December 1814, but news of this did not reach Melville until March 1815, during which time about fifty prisoners died. The prisoners were released to "quit Halifax at their own expense", though some were able to find berths on trade ships. All but 120 had left by mid-April; most of those remaining were hospital patients, who were sent to the Naval Hospital in Halifax in early May. Melville Island was decommissioned in May 1815, and its goods, including 1,170 hammocks, were sold at auction in Halifax.
### Receiving depot
After the decommissioning of the military prison, Melville Island was used as a receiving depot for some of the black refugees, the estimated 1600–2000 escaped slaves who arrived in Halifax between 1815 and 1818. In April 1815, seventy-six refugees were moved to Melville from the Halifax Poor House, many ill with smallpox. The refugees were given blankets, "colourful" clothing (often the uniforms of captured or demobilized soldiers), and children's shoes. Rations included pork or beef, potatoes, rice, cornmeal, molasses, spruce beer (to prevent scurvy), and sometimes coffee. To discourage men from leaving their families at the depot as they worked in Halifax, rations were only given to heads of families. Thomas Jeffery was granted a salary of £1500 (£113,600 as of 2020) for administering the depot. Eighty-two refugees died during the smallpox outbreak, and 500 were vaccinated to prevent the further spread of the disease. An increasing number passed through Melville Island on their way to Canadian settlements: between 727 and 798 are recorded from April to July 1815. Most of these found work in Halifax or moved to land grants, but some returned the following winter "when in distress". At least 107 of these refugees died on Melville Island. The province's lieutenant-governor ordered that the refugees be moved to Preston or Halifax in May 1816, and put the land up for lease to "a person of unexceptionable character", but no lease is recorded during this period. The hospital was officially closed in June 1816.
Beginning in 1818, Melville Island was used as a quarantine hospital for ill immigrants arriving in Nova Scotia. The hospital was operational for short periods in 1818, 1831, and 1846. By 1829, ten buildings were left on Melville Island, all "in a state of neglect and decay". In 1831, three doctors (Matthias Hoffmann, Samuel Head and John Stirling) were contracted to care for smallpox patients on the island; as "enthusiasm for the temporary hospital was not shared by the poor", only sixteen patients were treated there during this period. In 1847, over 1200 Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine were ordered quarantined on Melville Island by the Board of Health; of these, 203 were held in the "fever hospital", and 30 died. Typhus victims were also held at Melville, during which time the medical staff were not allowed to leave for fear of spreading the infection.
Diseases encountered among the immigrants included smallpox, typhus, and yellow fever. There were 37 recorded deaths.
### British Army
In 1855, Nova Scotia politician Joseph Howe developed a plan to use Melville Island as a recruitment and training centre for American soldiers to fight for the British in the Crimean War. US neutrality laws prevented Americans from participating in overseas wars, so recruiters sent to the US advertised for men to work on the Nova Scotia Railway, and faced arrest if their true purpose was discovered. Upon arrival in Halifax, the men were sent to Melville Island for enlistment and basic training. The first group of 66 men arrived on 6 April 1855, but all refused to join the British Foreign Legion. However, by the end of May there were 71 newly recruited soldiers on the peninsula, and up to 158 total had enlisted. American discontent with the project forced its abandonment in June; the Melville Island depot closed, and the recruits were sent first to Halifax and then to England. Overall the recruitment project enlisted between 500 and 700 men, mostly German and Irish nationals.
After the recruitment project ended, the Admiralty sold the land to the British army for £2800 (£267,500 as of 2020) for use as a military prison. The first 70 prisoners arrived in 1856. At this time, flogging was gradually being phased out as a punishment for military members, who were instead imprisoned under the Mutiny Act of 1844; the purchase of Melville Island allowed these prisoners to be removed from the overcrowded Halifax Citadel. A 22-man military guard supervised the prisoners, who were subjected to hard labour: the chief warder imported 500 tonnes (492 long tons; 551 short tons) of granite from Purcell's Cove for them to break. Punishments included solitary confinement or "shot drill", where an inmate was made to carry 11-kilogram (24 lb) cannonballs from one end of the yard to the other. A new 34-cell prison building was constructed in 1884 to alleviate overcrowding. There were some escape attempts during this period, the most violent of which involved the stone hammers used to break stone being repurposed as projectiles and weapons.
British officers from the Halifax garrison conducted inspections of the prison four times per year, and maintenance was carried out either by the prisoners themselves or by soldiers from the Halifax garrison. The prison also housed a schoolroom and chapel, both staffed by army personnel. A new stone prison was built before 1905 next to the older wooden barracks, as well as housing for warders and their families. The new building alleviated reported problems with lack of lighting and ventilation in the previous structure. In December of that year, the Canadian Permanent Force took over wardenship of the prison, at which time there were three remaining prisoners. The land was granted to the Canadian Government as the British left Nova Scotia in 1907. The name was changed in 1909 from "military prison" to "detention barracks", reflecting a shift in attitude towards incarcerated military personnel: inmates were known as detainees, not prisoners, and after their discharge from the military they maintained no permanent criminal record.
### First and Second World Wars
When the First World War began in 1914, Canadian police were given the ability to detain German and Austro-Hungarian nationals, and incarcerate any who refused to agree not to support their homelands in the war. In September, the Spanish ship Monserrat carrying a large number (about 80) of men en route to Germany to report for military service was intercepted by HMS Glory, which brought the ship to Halifax Harbour. Once there, the Germans aboard were taken to Melville Island with a garrison guard, interrogated, and imprisoned under the supervision of the detention barracks staff. Over the next several months, more German nationals were brought to Melville, detained either by British ships or by Canadian police forces. Escape attempts began in October, and a procedure to count prisoners twice daily was instituted in an attempt to prevent them. The anglophone guards often could not communicate with the prisoners or even pronounce their names, resorting to nicknames and complicating efforts in prisoner management. Repairs were made to the prison buildings after several inmates escaped by sawing a hole through the floor of the wooden barracks.
Initially there was no system in place to allow prisoners to send letters; censorship arrangements were made through the Dominion Police in Ottawa, and the American Consul was designated a representative for prisoner welfare. As the war progressed, groups of detainees were transferred to and from other prisons according to their behaviour or level of risk and the number of inmates per institution. After the 1917 Halifax Explosion, prisoners were transferred to the 800-man Amherst Internment Camp at Amherst, Nova Scotia. One of the prisoners transferred may have been Leon Trotsky, although this is disputed.
On 10 April 1935, a fire completely destroyed the old wooden prison barracks, so when the Second World War began in 1939, the remaining prisoners and guards were sent to McNab's Island. Melville Island was used first to confine deserters from the army, then from 1941 as a temporary storage facility for Canadian Army ammunition depots. When VE Day caused riots in downtown Halifax, there were rumours of a plan to break into the depots and deploy hand grenades; a trooper squad was sent to guard against this possibility, but no "invasion" occurred.
### 1945–present
After the end of the Second World War, military activities on Melville ended; the land was initially awarded to the Naval Sailors Association, a decision that prompted some disagreement among members of Parliament. Haligonians pushed for the area to be repurposed for recreation, partially due to anxieties about its use as a storage facility for potentially toxic chemicals. In 1947, the Canadian Army leased Melville Island to the Armdale Yacht Club for Can\$1 per year. The club demolished some of the buildings, renovated and expanded others, widened the road, and filled in a new embankment for boating. Further renovations were done in 1952 and the 1960s, adding verandahs to the two clubhouses (one of which dates to 1808 and was used as a warden's house) and remodelling their interiors. Though the club's lease was initially year-to-year, in 1956 it began a 99-year lease from the Department of National Defence. The club dredged Melville Cove, added a "marine railway", and created a large marina, at which dozens of boats are now docked.
## Culture
During certain periods, Melville Island was a social destination for Halifax residents. Haligonians visited the "town fair" run by French inmates during the Napoleonic period. The peninsula was called a "great resort of the ladies of Halifax" by an 1855 newspaper. However, from the beginning of the First World War to 1947, visitors to Melville were restricted. Though it was re-opened with the arrival of the Armdale Yacht Club, the area's history was largely forgotten until the 2000 establishment of Deadman's Island Park on the adjacent peninsula.
The peninsula has also been the subject of artistic and literary treatments. A number of writings by Melville prisoners have been preserved, including a diary by François-Lambert Bourneuf and an account credited to Benjamin Waterhouse (though historians are unsure of its true authorship). Politician Joseph Howe wrote a poem describing its use as a military prison. The site's history has been the subject of a book by Brian Cuthbertson, and another by Iris Shea and Heather Watts. The prison is the subject of a painting held by the UK National Trust and a Nova Scotian folk song, among other cultural works.
|
22,120,297 |
Verpa bohemica
| 1,158,639,677 |
Species of fungus in the family Morchellaceae found in northern North America, Europe, and Asia
|
[
"Edible fungi",
"Fungi described in 1828",
"Fungi of Asia",
"Fungi of Europe",
"Fungi of North America",
"Morchellaceae",
"Poisonous fungi"
] |
Verpa bohemica is a species of fungus in the family Morchellaceae. Commonly known as the early morel or the wrinkled thimble-cap. The mushroom has a pale yellow or brown thimble-shaped cap—2 to 4 cm (3⁄4 to 1+5⁄8 in) in diameter by 2 to 5 cm (3⁄4 to 2 in) long—that has a surface wrinkled and ribbed with brain-like convolutions. The cap hangs from the top of a lighter-colored, brittle stem that measures up to 12 cm (4+3⁄4 in) long by 1 to 2.5 cm (3⁄8 to 1 in) thick. Microscopically, the mushroom is distinguished by its large spores, typically 60–80 by 15–18 μm, and the presence of only two spores per ascus.
In the field, the mushroom is reliably distinguished from the true morels on the basis of cap attachment: V. bohemica has a cap that hangs completely free from the stem. Although widely considered edible, some attention should be paid to the correct preparation. Consumption of the mushroom, not correctly prepared lead to reports of poisoning in susceptible individuals. Poisoning symptoms include gastrointestinal upset and lack of muscular coordination. V. bohemica is found in northern North America, Europe, and Asia. It fruits in early spring, growing on the ground in woods following the snowmelt, before the appearance of "true morels" (genus Morchella). The synonym Ptychoverpa bohemica is often used by European mycologists.
## Taxonomy, phylogeny, and naming
The species was first described in the scientific literature by the Czech physician and mycologist Julius Vincenz von Krombholz in 1828, under the name Morchella bohemica. The German naturalist Joseph Schröter transferred it to the genus Verpa in 1893. Ptychoverpa bohemica is a synonym that was published by Frenchman Jean Louis Émile Boudier in his 1907 treatise on the Discomycetes of Europe; the name is still occasionally used, especially in European publications. Boudier believed that the large, curved ascospores and the rare and short paraphyses were sufficiently distinct to warrant a new genus to contain the single species. Ptychoverpa has also been classified as a section of Verpa. The section is characterized by the presence of thick longitudinal ridges on the cap that can be simple or forked. The species was first discovered in Canada by Alfred Brooker Klugh shortly before 1910 where it was referred to by another synonym, Morchella bispora.
The specific epithet bohemica refers to Bohemia (now a part of the Czech Republic), where Krombholz originally collected the species. The mushroom is commonly known as the "early morel", "early false morel", or the "wrinkled thimble-cap". Ptychoverpa is derived from the Ancient Greek ptyx (genitive form ptychos), meaning "fold", layer", or "plate".
## Description
The cap of this fungus (known technically as an apothecium) is 2 to 4 cm (3⁄4 to 1+5⁄8 in) in diameter by 2 to 5 cm (3⁄4 to 2 in) long, with a conical or bell shape. It is folded into longitudinal ridges that often fuse together (anastomose) in a vein-like network. The cap is attached to the stem at the top only—hanging from the top of the stipe, with the lobed edge free from the stem—and varies in color from yellowish brown to reddish brown; the underside of the cap is pale. The stem is 6 to 12 cm (2+3⁄8 to 4+3⁄4 in) long by 1 to 2.5 cm (3⁄8 to 1 in) thick, cream-white in color, and tapers upward so that the stem is thicker at the base than at the top. Although the stem is initially loosely stuffed with cottony hyphae, it eventually becomes hollow in maturity; overall, the mushroom is rather fragile. The spore deposit is yellow, and the flesh is white.
Relative to other typical mushroom species, the spores of V. bohemica are huge, typically measuring 60–80 by 15–18 μm. They are elliptical, smooth, sometimes curved, and appear hyaline (translucent) to yellowish. The spores, which number two (more rarely three) per ascus are characteristic for this species. The smooth, elliptical asci measure 275–350 μm long by 16–23 μm wide. The British-Canadian mycologist Arthur Henry Reginald Buller determined that the asci are heliotropic—they bend toward light. As he noted, "I cut transverse sections though their pilei, examined these sections under the microscope, and at once perceived that in all the hymenial grooves and depressions the asci were curved outwards so that their opercula must have faced the strongest rays of light to which the ends of the asci has been subjected in the places where the fruit-bodies developed." This response to the stimulus of light is significant because it permits a fruit body to point and later discharge its asci towards open spaces, thus increasing the chances that the spores will be dispersed by wind. The paraphyses are thick and club-shaped, with diameters of 7–8 μm at their tips.
### Edibility
In Russia Verpa bohemica is a commercial species. It is usually sold frozen. No clinical cases have been registered within the Russian Federation concerning intoxications to this mushroom up to date. Despite that, the edibility of this species has been source of different opinions. Although Verpa bohemica is eaten by many, consumption of large amounts in a single sitting, or on successive days, has been reported to cause poisoning in susceptible individuals. Symptoms include gastrointestinal upset and lack of muscular coordination, similar to the effects reported by some individuals after consuming the false morel species Gyromitra esculenta. The responsible toxin in G. esculenta is gyromitrin; it was suspected that V. bohemica may be able to synthesize low levels of the toxin, however, no experiments on V. bohemica have concluded that it contains any level of gyromitrin. Over-consumption of the mushroom has been reported to have induced a coma. There are also reports of alcohol intolerance (disulfiram-like reaction) after consumption.
The edibility of Verpa has been concluded to be the same as that of Morchella: always cook thoroughly and if eating for the first time, restrict consumption to small portions to test tolerance. Some advocate only eating the caps and discarding the stems. Opinions on the flavor of the mushrooms vary, ranging from "strong but not on a par with true morels", to "pleasant", to "not distinctive".
### Similar species
The closely related species Verpa conica typically has a smooth cap, although specimens with wrinkled caps are known. V. conica may be distinguished microscopically by its eight-spored asci. Its North American range extends much further south than V. bohemica. Another similar group of species are the "half-free" morels, Morchella semilibera and others, which have a honeycombed cap that is attached to the stalk for about half of its length, and with ridges that are darker than the pits. Additionally, a cross-sectioned stem of a specimen of M. semilibera is hollow, while V. bohemica usually has cottony wisps in the stem, and M. semilibera usually has vertical perforations near the base, while V. bohemica lacks them. Verpa bohemica may be reliably distinguished from all similar species by its much larger spores.
## Ecology, habitat and distribution
The fruit bodies of V. bohemica grow singly or scattered on the ground in woods in early spring, often before the appearance of the morel, and throughout the morel season. It is often found along riverbanks, near cottonwoods, willows and aspens, often buried in plant litter. The fungus prefers to fruit in moist areas with ample sunlight. Its minimum growth temperature is 3 °C (37 °F), with an optimum of 22 °C (72 °F), and a maximum of about 30 °C (86 °F). A study of carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios indicated that Verpa bohemica is saprobic, that is, obtaining nutrients from decomposing organic matter. It has been suggested, however, that the fungus is mycorrhizal for at least part of its life cycle. The fungus has a wide distribution throughout northern North America; its range extends south to the Great Lakes in the Midwestern United States, and south to northern California on the West Coast. In Europe, the fungus is widely distributed, and has been collected from Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, Poland, Russia, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Ukraine. In Asia, it has been recorded from India and Turkey.
A 10-year study of the distribution, time of fruiting and habitats of morel and false morel population in Iowa showed that early false morels are the first morels to fruit in the spring, appearing shortly after leaves begin to form on deciduous trees. Narrow-head morels (Morchella angusticeps) fruit next, followed by the yellow or white morels (Morchella esculenta), then lastly Morchella crassipes. The fruit bodies serve as a habitat for breeding dipterans (flies), including Porricondyla media, Pegomya geniculata, and Trichocera annulata.
|
25,832 |
Ringo Starr
| 1,173,856,444 |
English musician, drummer for the Beatles
|
[
"1940 births",
"20th-century English male actors",
"20th-century English male singers",
"20th-century English singers",
"21st-century English male singers",
"21st-century English male writers",
"21st-century English singers",
"Apple Records artists",
"Atlantic Records artists",
"Beat musicians",
"Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners",
"British Eurosceptics",
"British male drummers",
"Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres",
"Composers awarded knighthoods",
"English baritones",
"English expatriates in Monaco",
"English expatriates in the United States",
"English male film actors",
"English male singer-songwriters",
"English male voice actors",
"English rock drummers",
"Grammy Award winners",
"Knights Bachelor",
"Living people",
"MNRK Music Group artists",
"Male actors from Liverpool",
"Members of the Order of the British Empire",
"Mercury Records artists",
"Musicians awarded knighthoods",
"Musicians from Liverpool",
"Musicians from Los Angeles",
"Parlophone artists",
"People from Dingle, Liverpool",
"People from Monte Carlo",
"People from Sunninghill",
"People from the Borough of Waverley",
"People named in the Pandora Papers",
"Plastic Ono Band members",
"RCA Records artists",
"Ringo Starr",
"Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band members",
"Ringo Starr family",
"Rory Storm and the Hurricanes members",
"Singers awarded knighthoods",
"Singers from Liverpool",
"Swan Records artists",
"The Beatles members",
"Vee-Jay Records artists",
"World Music Awards winners",
"Writers from Liverpool"
] |
Sir Richard Starkey MBE (born 7 July 1940), known professionally as Ringo Starr, is an English musician, songwriter and actor who achieved international fame as the drummer for the Beatles. Starr occasionally sang lead vocals with the group, usually for one song on each album, including "Yellow Submarine" and "With a Little Help from My Friends". He also wrote and sang the Beatles songs "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden", and is credited as a co-writer of four others.
Starr was afflicted by life-threatening illnesses during childhood, with periods of prolonged hospitalisation. He briefly held a position with British Rail before securing an apprenticeship as a machinist at a Liverpool school equipment manufacturer. Soon afterwards, Starr became interested in the UK skiffle craze and developed a fervent admiration for the genre. In 1957, he co-founded his first band, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, which earned several prestigious local bookings before the fad succumbed to American rock and roll around early 1958. When the Beatles formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool group, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. After achieving moderate success in the UK and Hamburg, he quit the Hurricanes when he was asked to join the Beatles in August 1962, replacing Pete Best.
In addition to the Beatles' films, Starr has acted in numerous others. After the band's break-up in 1970, he released several successful singles including the US top-ten hit "It Don't Come Easy", and number ones "Photograph" and "You're Sixteen". His most successful UK single was "Back Off Boogaloo", which peaked at number two. He achieved commercial and critical success with his 1973 album Ringo, which was a top-ten release in both the UK and the US. Starr has featured in numerous documentaries, hosted television shows, narrated the first two series of the children's television program Thomas & Friends and portrayed "Mr. Conductor" during the first season of the PBS children's television series Shining Time Station. Since 1989, he has toured with thirteen variations of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band.
Starr's playing style, which emphasised feel over technical virtuosity, influenced many drummers to reconsider their playing from a compositional perspective. He also influenced various modern drumming techniques, such as the matched grip, tuning the drums lower, and using muffling devices on tonal rings. In his opinion, his finest recorded performance was on the Beatles' "Rain". In 1999, he was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame. In 2011, Rolling Stone readers named him the fifth-greatest drummer of all time. He was inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a Beatle in 1988 and as a solo artist in 2015, and appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2018 New Year Honours for services to music. In 2020, he was cited as the wealthiest drummer in the world, with a net worth of \$350 million.
## Early life
Richard Starkey was born on 7 July 1940 at 9 Madryn Street in Dingle, an inner-city area of Liverpool. He is the only child of confectioners Richard Starkey (1913–1981) and Elsie Gleave (1914–1987). Elsie enjoyed singing and dancing, a hobby that she shared with her husband, an avid fan of swing. Prior to the birth of their son, whom they called "Richy", the couple had spent much of their free time on the local ballroom circuit, but their regular outings ended soon after his birth. Elsie adopted an overprotective approach to raising her son that bordered on fixation. Subsequently, "Big Ritchie", as Starkey's father became known, lost interest in his family, choosing instead to spend long hours drinking and dancing in pubs, sometimes for several consecutive days.
In an effort to reduce their housing costs, his family moved in 1944 to another neighbourhood in the Dingle, Admiral Grove; soon afterwards his parents separated, and they divorced within the year. Starkey later stated that he has "no real memories" of his father, who made little effort to bond with him, visiting as few as three times thereafter. Elsie found it difficult to survive on her ex-husband's support payments of thirty shillings a week, so she took on several menial jobs cleaning houses before securing a position as a barmaid, an occupation that she held for twelve years.
At the age of six, Starkey developed appendicitis. Following a routine appendectomy he contracted peritonitis, causing him to fall into a coma that lasted days. His recovery spanned twelve months, which he spent away from his family at Liverpool's Myrtle Street children's hospital. Upon his discharge in May 1948, his mother allowed him to stay at home, causing him to miss school. At age eight, he remained illiterate, with a poor grasp of mathematics. His lack of education contributed to a feeling of alienation at school, which resulted in his regularly playing truant at Sefton Park. After several years of twice-weekly tutoring from his surrogate sister and neighbour, Marie Maguire Crawford, Starkey had nearly caught up to his peers academically, but in 1953, he contracted tuberculosis and was admitted to a sanatorium, where he remained for two years. During his stay the medical staff made an effort to stimulate motor activity and relieve boredom by encouraging their patients to join the hospital band, leading to his first exposure to a percussion instrument: a makeshift mallet made from a cotton bobbin that he used to strike the cabinets next to his bed. Soon afterwards, he grew increasingly interested in drumming, receiving a copy of the Alyn Ainsworth song "Bedtime for Drums" as a convalescence gift from Crawford. Starkey commented: "I was in the hospital band ... That's where I really started playing. I never wanted anything else from there on ... My grandparents gave me a mandolin and a banjo, but I didn't want them. My grandfather gave me a harmonica ... we had a piano – nothing. Only the drums."
Starkey attended St Silas, a Church of England primary school near his house where his classmates nicknamed him "Lazarus", and later Dingle Vale Secondary modern school, where he showed an aptitude for art and drama, as well as practical subjects including mechanics. As a result of the prolonged hospitalisations, he fell behind his peers scholastically and was ineligible for the 11-plus qualifying examination required for attendance at a grammar school. On 17 April 1954, Starkey's mother married Harry Graves at the register office on Mount Pleasant, Liverpool. He was an ex-Londoner who had moved to Liverpool following the failure of his first marriage. Graves, an impassioned fan of big band music and their vocalists, introduced Starkey to recordings by Dinah Shore, Sarah Vaughan and Billy Daniels. Graves stated that he and "Ritchie" never had an unpleasant exchange between them; Starkey later commented: "He was great ... I learned gentleness from Harry." After the extended hospital stay following Starkey's recovery from tuberculosis, he did not return to school, preferring instead to stay at home and listen to music while playing along by beating biscuit tins with sticks.
Beatles biographer Bob Spitz described Starkey's upbringing as "a Dickensian chronicle of misfortune". Houses in the area were "poorly ventilated, postage-stamp-sized ... patched together by crumbling plaster walls, with a rear door that opened onto an outhouse." Crawford commented: "Like all of the families who lived in the Dingle, he was part of an ongoing struggle to survive." The children who lived there spent much of their time at Prince's Park, escaping the soot-filled air of their coal-fuelled neighbourhood. Adding to their difficult circumstances, violent crime was an almost constant concern for people living in one of the oldest and poorest inner-city districts in Liverpool. Starkey later commented: "You kept your head down, your eyes open, and you didn't get in anybody's way."
After his return home from the sanatorium in late 1955, Starkey entered the workforce but was lacking in motivation and discipline; his initial attempts at gainful employment proved unsuccessful. In an effort to secure himself some warm clothes, he briefly held a railway worker's job with British Rail, which came with an employer-issued suit. He was supplied with a hat but no uniform and, unable to pass the physical examination, he was laid off and granted unemployment benefits. He then found work as a waiter serving drinks on a day boat that travelled from Liverpool to North Wales, but his fear of conscription into military service led him to quit the job, not wanting to give the Royal Navy the impression that he was suitable for seafaring work. In mid-1956, Graves secured Starkey a position as an apprentice machinist at Henry Hunt and Son, a Liverpool school equipment manufacturer. While working at the facility Starkey befriended Roy Trafford, and the two bonded over their shared interest in music. Trafford introduced Starkey to skiffle, and he quickly became a fervent admirer.
## First bands: 1957–1961
Soon after Trafford piqued Starkey's interest in skiffle, the two began rehearsing songs in the manufacturing plant's cellar during their lunch breaks. Trafford recalled: "I played a guitar, and [Ritchie] just made a noise on a box ... Sometimes, he just slapped a biscuit tin with some keys, or banged on the backs of chairs." The pair were joined by Starkey's neighbour and co-worker, the guitarist Eddie Miles, forming the Eddie Miles Band, later renamed Eddie Clayton and the Clayton Squares after a Liverpool landmark. The band performed popular skiffle songs such as "Rock Island Line" and "Walking Cane", with Starkey raking a thimble across a washboard, creating primitive, driving rhythms. Starkey enjoyed dancing as his parents had years earlier, and he and Trafford briefly took dance lessons at two schools. Though the lessons were short-lived, they provided Starkey and Trafford with an introduction that allowed them to dance competently while enjoying nights out on the town.
On Christmas Day 1957, Graves gave Starkey a second-hand drum kit consisting of a snare drum, bass drum and a makeshift cymbal fashioned from a rubbish bin lid. Although basic and crude, the kit facilitated his progression as a musician while increasing the commercial potential of the Eddie Clayton band, who went on to book prestigious local gigs before the skiffle craze faded in early 1958 as American rock and roll became popular in the UK.
In November 1959, Starkey joined Al Caldwell's Texans, a skiffle group who were looking for someone with a proper drum kit so that the group could transition from one of Liverpool's best-known skiffle acts to a full-fledged rock and roll band. They had begun playing local clubs as the Raging Texans, then Jet Storm and the Raging Texans before settling on Rory Storm and the Hurricanes shortly before recruiting Starkey. About this time he adopted the stage name Ringo Starr; derived from the rings he wore and also because it implied a country and western influence. His singing solos were billed as Starr Time.
By early 1960, the Hurricanes had become one of Liverpool's leading bands. In May, they were offered a three-month residency at a Butlins holiday camp in Wales. Although initially reluctant to accept the residency and end his five-year machinist apprenticeship that he had begun four years earlier, Starr eventually agreed to the arrangement. The Butlins gig led to other opportunities for the band, including an unpleasant tour of US Air Force bases in France about which Starr commented: "The French don't like the British; at least I didn't like them." The Hurricanes became so successful that when initially offered a highly coveted residency in Hamburg, they turned it down because of their prior commitment with Butlins. They eventually accepted, joining the Beatles at Bruno Koschmider's Kaiserkeller on 1 October 1960, where Starr first met the band. Storm's Hurricanes were given top-billing over the Beatles, who also received less pay. Starr performed with the Beatles during a few stand-in engagements while in Hamburg. On 15 October 1960, he drummed with John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, recording with them for the first time while backing Hurricanes singer Lu Walters on the George Gershwin/DuBose Heyward aria "Summertime". During Starr's first stay in Hamburg he also met Tony Sheridan, who valued his drumming abilities to the point of asking Starr to leave the Hurricanes and join his band.
## The Beatles: 1962–1970
### Replacing Best
Starr quit Rory Storm and the Hurricanes in January 1962 and briefly joined Sheridan in Hamburg before returning to the Hurricanes for a third season at Butlins. On 14 August, Starr accepted Lennon's invitation to join the Beatles. On 16 August, Beatles manager Brian Epstein fired their drummer, Pete Best, who recalled: "He said 'I've got some bad news for you. The boys want you out and Ringo in.' He said [Beatles producer] George Martin wasn't too pleased with my playing [and] the boys thought I didn't fit in." Starr first performed as a member of the Beatles on 18 August 1962, at a horticultural society dance at Port Sunlight. After his appearance at the Cavern Club the following day, Best fans, upset by his firing, held vigils outside his house and at the club shouting "Pete forever! Ringo never!" Harrison received a black eye from one upset fan, and Epstein, whose car tyres they had flattened in anger, temporarily hired a bodyguard.
Starr's first recording session as a member of the Beatles took place on 4 September 1962. He stated that Martin had thought that he "was crazy and couldn't play ... because I was trying to play the percussion and the drums at the same time, we were just a four-piece band". For their second recording session with Starr, on 11 September 1962, Martin replaced him with session drummer Andy White while recording takes for what would be the two sides of the Beatles' first single, "Love Me Do", backed with "P.S. I Love You". Starr played tambourine on "Love Me Do" and maracas on "P.S. I Love You". Concerned about his status in the Beatles, he thought: "That's the end, they're doing a Pete Best on me." Martin later clarified: "I simply didn't know what Ringo was like and I wasn't prepared to take any risks."
By November 1962, Starr had been accepted by Beatles fans, who were now calling for him to sing. He began receiving an amount of fan mail equal to that of the others, which helped to secure his position within the band. Starr considered himself fortunate to be on the same "wavelength" as the other Beatles: "I had to be, or I wouldn't have lasted. I had to join them as people as well as a drummer." He was given a small percentage of Lennon and McCartney's publishing company, Northern Songs, but derived his primary income during this period from a one-quarter share of Beatles Ltd, a corporation financed by the band's net concert earnings. He commented on the nature of his lifestyle after having achieved success with the Beatles: "I lived in nightclubs for three years. It used to be a non-stop party." Like his father, Starr became well known for his late-night dancing and he received praise for his skills.
### Worldwide success
During 1963, the Beatles enjoyed increasing popularity in Britain. In January, their second single, "Please Please Me", followed "Love Me Do" into the UK charts and a successful television appearance on Thank Your Lucky Stars earned favourable reviews, leading to a boost in sales and radio play. By the end of the year, the phenomenon known as Beatlemania had spread throughout the country, and by February 1964 the Beatles had become an international success when they performed in New York City on The Ed Sullivan Show to a record 73 million viewers. Starr commented: "In the States I know I went over well. It knocked me out to see and hear the kids waving for me. I'd made it as a personality ... Our appeal ... is that we're ordinary lads." He was a source of inspiration for several songs written at the time, including Penny Valentine's "I Want to Kiss Ringo Goodbye" and Rolf Harris's "Ringo for President". Cher released her first single, "Ringo, I Love You" in 1964 under the pseudonym Bonnie Joe Mason.
In 1964, "I love Ringo" lapel pins were the bestselling Beatles merchandise. The prominent placing of the Ludwig logo on the bass drum of his American import drum kit gave the company such a burst of publicity that it became the dominant drum manufacturer in North America for the next twenty years. During live performances, the Beatles continued the "Starr Time" routine that had been popular among his fans: Lennon would place a microphone in front of Starr's kit in preparation for his spotlight moment and audiences would erupt in screams. When the Beatles made their film debut in A Hard Day's Night, Starr garnered praise from critics, who considered his delivery of deadpan one-liners and his non-speaking scenes highlights. The extended non-speaking sequences had to be arranged by director Richard Lester because of Starr's lack of sleep the previous night; Starr commented: "Because I'd been drinking all night I was incapable of saying a line." Epstein attributed Starr's acclaim to "the little man's quaintness". After the release of the Beatles' second feature film, Help! (1965), Starr won a Melody Maker poll against his fellow Beatles for his performance as the central character in the film.
During an interview with Playboy in 1964, Lennon explained that Starr had filled in with the Beatles when Best was ill; Starr replied: "[Best] took little pills to make him ill". Soon after, Best filed a libel suit against him that lasted four years before the court reached an undisclosed settlement in Best's favour. In June, the Beatles were scheduled to tour Denmark, the Netherlands, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Before the start of the tour, Starr was stricken with a high-grade fever, pharyngitis and tonsillitis, and briefly stayed in a local hospital, followed by several days of recuperation at home. He was temporarily replaced for five concerts by 24-year-old session drummer Jimmie Nicol. Starr was discharged from the hospital and rejoined the band in Melbourne on 15 June. He later said that he feared he would be permanently replaced during his illness. In August, the Beatles were introduced to American songwriter Bob Dylan, who offered the group cannabis cigarettes. Starr was the first to try one but the others were hesitant.
On 11 February 1965, Starr married Maureen Cox, whom he had met in 1962. By this time the stress and pressure of Beatlemania had reached a peak for him. He received a telephoned death threat before a show in Montreal, and resorted to positioning his cymbals vertically in an attempt to defend against would-be assassins. The constant pressure affected the Beatles' performances; Starr commented: "We were turning into such bad musicians ... there was no groove to it." He was also feeling increasingly isolated from the musical activities of his bandmates, who were moving past the traditional boundaries of rock music into territory that often did not require his accompaniment; during recording sessions he spent hours playing cards with their road manager Neil Aspinall and road manager Mal Evans while the other Beatles perfected tracks without him. In a letter published in Melody Maker, a fan asked the Beatles to let Starr sing more; he replied: "[I am] quite happy with my one little track on each album".
### Studio years
In August 1966, the Beatles released Revolver, their seventh UK LP. It included the song "Yellow Submarine", their only British number-one single with Starr as the lead singer. Later that month, owing to the increasing pressures of touring, the Beatles gave their final concert, a 30-minute performance at San Francisco's Candlestick Park. Starr commented: "We gave up touring at the right time. Four years of Beatlemania were enough for anyone." By December he had moved to a larger estate called Sunny Heights, 3 acres (1.2 ha) in size, at St George's Hill in Weybridge, Surrey, near to Lennon. Although he had equipped the house with many luxury items, including numerous televisions, light machines, film projectors, stereo equipment, a billiard table, go-kart track and a bar named the Flying Cow, he did not include a drum kit; he explained: "When we don't record, I don't play."
For the Beatles' seminal 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Starr sang lead vocals on the Lennon–McCartney composition "With a Little Help from My Friends". Although the Beatles had enjoyed widespread commercial and critical success with Sgt. Pepper, the long hours they spent recording the LP contributed to Starr's increased feeling of alienation within the band; he commented: "[It] wasn't our best album. That was the peak for everyone else, but for me it was a bit like being a session musician ... They more or less direct me in the style I can play." His inability to compose new material led to his input being minimised during recording sessions; he often found himself relegated to adding minor percussion effects to songs by McCartney, Lennon and Harrison. During his downtime, Starr worked on his guitar playing, and said: "I jump into chords that no one seems to get into. Most of the stuff I write is twelve-bar".
Epstein's death in August 1967 left the Beatles without management; Starr remarked: "[It was] a strange time for us, when it's someone who we've relied on in the business, where we never got involved." Soon afterwards, the band began an ill-fated film project, Magical Mystery Tour. Starr's growing interest in photography led to his billing as the movie's Director of Photography, and his participation in the film's editing was matched only by that of McCartney. In February 1968, Starr became the first Beatle to sing on another artist's show without the others. He sang the Buck Owens hit "Act Naturally", and performed a duet with Cilla Black, "Do You Like Me Just a Little Bit?" on her BBC One television programme, Cilla.
In November 1968, Apple Records released The Beatles, commonly known as the "White Album". The album was partly inspired by the band's recent interactions with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. While attending the Maharishi's intermediate course at his ashram in Rishikesh, India, they enjoyed one of their most prolific writing periods, composing most of the album there. It was here that Starr completed his first recorded Beatles song, "Don't Pass Me By", but he left after 10 days and later compared his time there to a stay at Butlin's. The long-lasting health problems that began in his childhood had an impact on his time in India, causing him to experience allergies and sensitivities to the local food; when the band travelled there, he resorted to taking his own food with him.
Relations within the Beatles deteriorated during the recording of the White Album, and there were occasions where only one or two members were involved in the recording of a track. Starr had become tired of McCartney's increasingly overbearing approach, Lennon's passive-aggressive behaviour, and the near-constant presence of Lennon's wife Yoko Ono. After one particularly difficult session which included McCartney harshly criticising his drumming, Starr briefly quit the Beatles and went on holiday to Sardinia, where he and his family stayed on a boat loaned to them by actor Peter Sellers. During a lunch there, the chef served octopus and Starr refused to eat it; an ensuing conversation with the ship's captain about the animal inspired Starr's song "Octopus's Garden" from the Beatles' album Abbey Road, which he wrote using a guitar during the trip. Two weeks later, he returned to the studio to find that Harrison had covered his drum kit in flowers as a welcome-back gesture.
Despite a temporary return to friendly interactions during the completion of the White Album, production of the Beatles' fourth feature film Let It Be and its accompanying album further strained band relationships. On 20 August 1969, the Beatles gathered for the final time at Abbey Road Studios for a mixing session for "I Want You". At a business meeting exactly one month later, Lennon told the others that he was leaving the band, effective immediately. However, the band's break-up would not become public knowledge until McCartney's announcement on 10 April 1970 that he was also leaving.
## Solo career
### 1970s
Shortly before McCartney announced his exit from the Beatles in April 1970, he and Starr had a falling out due to McCartney's refusal to cede the release date of his eponymous solo album to allow for Starr's debut, Sentimental Journey, and the Beatles' Let It Be. Starr's album – composed of renditions of pre-rock standards that included musical arrangements by Quincy Jones, Maurice Gibb, George Martin and McCartney – peaked at number seven in the UK and number 22 in the US. Starr followed Sentimental Journey with the country-inspired Beaucoups of Blues, engineered by Scotty Moore and featuring renowned Nashville session musician Pete Drake. Despite favourable reviews, the album was a commercial failure. Starr subsequently combined his musical activities with developing a career as a film actor.
Starr played drums on Lennon's John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970), Ono's Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band (1970), and on Harrison's albums All Things Must Pass (1970), Living in the Material World (1973) and Dark Horse (1974). In 1971, Starr participated in the Concert for Bangladesh, organised by Harrison, and with him co-wrote the hit single "It Don't Come Easy", which reached number four in both the US and the UK. The following year he released his most successful UK hit, "Back Off Boogaloo" (again produced and co-written by Harrison), which peaked at number two (US number nine). Having become friends with the English singer Marc Bolan, Starr made his directorial debut with the 1972 T. Rex documentary Born to Boogie.
In 1973 and 1974, Starr had two number one hits in the US: "Photograph", a UK number eight hit co-written with Harrison, and "You're Sixteen", written by the Sherman Brothers. Starr's third million-selling single in the US, "You're Sixteen" was released in the UK in February 1974 where it peaked at number four. Both tracks appeared on Starr's debut rock album, Ringo, produced by Richard Perry and featuring further contributions from Harrison as well as a song each from Lennon and McCartney. A commercial and critical success, the LP also included "Oh My My", a US number five. The album reached number seven in the UK and number two in the US. Author Peter Doggett describes Ringo as a template for Starr's solo career, saying that, as a musician first rather than a songwriter, "he would rely on his friends and his charm, and if both were on tap, then the results were usually appealing".
Goodnight Vienna followed in 1974 and was also successful, reaching number eight in the US and number 30 in the UK. Featuring contributions from Lennon, Elton John and Harry Nilsson, the album included a cover (suggested by Lennon) of the Platters' 1954 hit "Only You (And You Alone)", which peaked at number six in the US and number 28 in the UK, and Hoyt Axton's "No No Song", which was a US number three and Starr's seventh consecutive top-ten hit. The Elton John-written "Snookeroo" failed to chart in the UK, however. In mid-November 1974, a music video for the song and promotional film for the album was filmed on the rooftop of the Capitol Records Building in Los Angeles, designed to resemble a stack of discs. Lennon provided a voiceover as Starr's spacecraft landed on the building and Starr boarded it before taking off over the city. Starr, Nilsson, and Keith Moon were among the cast, along with a forty-foot robot named 'Gort' placed on the building. During this period Starr became romantically involved with Lynsey de Paul. He played tambourine on a song she wrote and produced for Vera Lynn, "Don't You Remember When", and he inspired another De Paul song, "If I Don't Get You the Next One Will", which she described as being about revenge after he missed a dinner appointment with her because he was asleep in his office.
Starr founded the record label Ring O' Records in 1975. The company signed eleven artists and released fifteen singles and five albums between 1975 and 1978, including works by David Hentschel, Graham Bonnet and Rab Noakes. The commercial impact of Starr's own career diminished over the same period, however, although he continued to record and remained a familiar celebrity presence. Speaking in 2001, he attributed this downward turn to his "[not] taking enough interest" in music, saying of himself and friends such as Nilsson and Keith Moon: "We weren't musicians dabbling in drugs and alcohol; now we were junkies dabbling in music." Starr, Nilsson and Moon were members of a drinking club, the Hollywood Vampires.
From the late 1960s until the mid-1980s, Starr and the designer Robin Cruikshank ran a furniture and interior design company, ROR. ROR's designs were placed on sale in the department stores of Harvey Nichols and Liberty of London. The company designed the interiors of palaces in Abu Dhabi and Oman, and the apartments of Paul Raymond and Starr's friend Nilsson.
In November 1976, Starr appeared as a guest at the Band's farewell concert, featured in the 1978 Martin Scorsese documentary The Last Waltz. Also in 1976, Starr issued Ringo's Rotogravure, the first release under his new contract with Atlantic Records for the North American market and Polydor for all other territories. The album was produced by Arif Mardin and featured compositions by Lennon, McCartney and Harrison. Starr promoted the release heavily, yet Rotogravure and its accompanying singles failed to chart in the UK. In America, the LP produced two minor hits, "A Dose of Rock 'n' Roll" (number 26) and a cover of "Hey! Baby" (number 74), and achieved moderate sales, reaching a chart position of 28. Its disappointing performance inspired Atlantic to revamp Starr's formula; the result was a blend of disco and 1970s pop, Ringo the 4th (1977). The album failed to chart in the UK and peaked at number 162 in the US. In 1978 Starr released Bad Boy, which reached number 129 in the US and again failed to place on the UK albums chart.
In April 1979, Starr became seriously ill with intestinal problems relating to his childhood bout of peritonitis and was taken to the Princess Grace Hospital in Monte Carlo. He almost died and during an operation on 28 April, several feet of intestine had to be removed. Three weeks later he played with McCartney and Harrison at Eric Clapton's wedding. On 28 November, a fire destroyed his Hollywood home and much of his Beatles memorabilia.
### 1980s
On 19 May 1980, Starr and Barbara Bach survived a car crash in Surrey, England.
Following Lennon's murder in December 1980, Harrison modified the lyrics of a song he had originally written for Starr, "All Those Years Ago", as a tribute to their former bandmate. Released as a Harrison single in 1981, the track, which included Starr's drum part and overdubbed backing vocals by McCartney, peaked at number two in the US charts and number 13 in the UK. Later that year, Starr released Stop and Smell the Roses, featuring songs produced by Nilsson, McCartney, Harrison, Ronnie Wood and Stephen Stills. The album's lead single, the Harrison-composed "Wrack My Brain", reached number 38 in the US charts, but failed to chart in the UK. Lennon had offered a pair of songs for inclusion on the album – "Nobody Told Me" and "Life Begins at 40" – but following his death, Starr did not feel comfortable recording them. Soon after the murder, Starr and his girlfriend Barbara Bach flew to New York City to be with Lennon's widow Yoko Ono.
Following Stop and Smell the Roses, Starr's recording projects were beset with problems. After completing Old Wave in 1982 with producer Joe Walsh, he was unable to find a record company willing to release the album in the UK or the US. In 1987, he abandoned sessions in Memphis for a planned country album, produced by Chips Moman, after which Moman was blocked by a court injunction from issuing the recordings. Starr narrated the 1984–86 series of the children's series Thomas & Friends, a Britt Allcroft production based on the books by the Reverend W. Awdry. For a single season in 1989, Starr also portrayed the character Mr. Conductor in the American Thomas & Friends spin-off, Shining Time Station.
In 1985, Starr performed with his son Zak as part of Artists United Against Apartheid on the protest song "Sun City", and, with Harrison and Eric Clapton, was among the special guests on Carl Perkins' TV special Blue Suede Shoes: A Rockabilly Session. In 1987, he played drums on Harrison's Beatles pastiche "When We Was Fab" and also appeared in Godley & Creme's innovative video clip for the song. The same year, Starr joined Harrison, Clapton, Jeff Lynne and Elton John in a performance at London's Wembley Arena for the Prince's Trust charity. In January 1988, he attended the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony in New York, with Harrison and Ono (the latter representing Lennon), to accept the Beatles' induction into the Hall of Fame.
During October and November 1988, Starr and Bach attended a detox clinic in Tucson, Arizona; each received a six-week treatment for alcoholism. He later commented on his longstanding addiction: "Years I've lost, absolute years ... I've no idea what happened. I lived in a blackout." Having embraced sobriety, Starr focused on re-establishing his career by making a return to touring. On 23 July 1989, Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band gave their first performance to an audience of ten thousand in Dallas, Texas. Setting a pattern that would continue over the following decades, the band consisted of Starr and an assortment of musicians who had been successful in their own right at different times. The concerts interchanged Starr's singing, including selections of his Beatles and solo songs, with performances of each of the other artists' well-known material, the latter incorporating either Starr or another musician as drummer.
### 1990s
The first All-Starr excursion led to the release of Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band (1990), a compilation of live performances from the 1989 tour. Also in 1990, Starr recorded a version of the song "I Call Your Name" for a television special marking the 10th anniversary of John Lennon's death and the 50th anniversary of Lennon's birth. The track, produced by Lynne, features a supergroup composed of Lynne, Tom Petty, Joe Walsh and Jim Keltner.
The following year, Starr made a cameo appearance on The Simpsons episode "Brush with Greatness" and contributed an original song, "You Never Know", to the soundtrack of the John Hughes film Curly Sue. In 1992, he released his first studio album in nine years, Time Takes Time, which was produced by Phil Ramone, Don Was, Lynne and Peter Asher and featured guest appearances by various stars including Brian Wilson and Harry Nilsson. The album failed to achieve commercial success, although the single "Weight of the World" peaked at number 74 in the UK, marking his first appearance on the singles chart there since "Only You" in 1974.
In 1994, he began a collaboration with the surviving former Beatles for the Beatles Anthology project. They recorded two new Beatles songs built around solo vocal and piano tapes recorded by Lennon and gave lengthy interviews about the Beatles' career. Released in December 1995, "Free as a Bird" was the first new Beatles single since 1970. In March 1996, they released a second single, "Real Love". The temporary reunion ended when Harrison refused to participate in the completion of a third song. Starr then played drums on McCartney's 1997 album Flaming Pie. Among the tracks to which he contributed, "Little Willow" was a song McCartney wrote about Starr's ex-wife Maureen, who died in 1994, while "Really Love You" was the first official release ever credited to McCartney–Starkey.
In 1998, he released two albums on the Mercury label. The studio album Vertical Man marked the beginning of a nine-year partnership with Mark Hudson, who produced the album and, with his band the Roundheads, formed the core of the backing group on the recordings. In addition, many famous guests joined on various tracks, including Martin, Petty, McCartney and, in his final appearance on a Starr album, Harrison. Most of the songs were written by Starr and the band. Joe Walsh and the Roundheads joined Starr for his appearance on VH1 Storytellers, which was released as an album under the same name. During the show, he performed greatest hits and new songs and told anecdotes relating to them. Starr's final release for Mercury was the 1999 Christmas-themed I Wanna Be Santa Claus. The album was a commercial failure, although the record company chose not to issue it in Britain.
### 2000s
Starr was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 2002, joining an elite group of drummers and percussionists that include Buddy Rich, William F. Ludwig Sr. and William F. Ludwig Jr. On 29 November 2002 (the first anniversary of Harrison's death), he performed "Photograph" and a cover of Carl Perkins' "Honey Don't" at the Concert for George held in the Royal Albert Hall, London. Early the following year, he released the album Ringo Rama, which contained a song he co-wrote as a tribute to Harrison, "Never Without You". Also in 2003, he formed Pumkinhead Records with All-Starr Band member Mark Hudson. The label was not prolific, but their first signing was Liam Lynch, who produced a 2003 LP entitled Fake Songs.
Starr served as an honorary Santa Tracker and voice-over personality in 2003 and 2004 during the London stop in Father Christmas's annual Christmas Eve journey, as depicted in the annual NORAD tracks Santa program. According to NORAD officials, he was "a Starr in the east" who helped guide North American Aerospace Defense Command's Santa-tracking tradition.
His 2005 release Choose Love eschewed the star-guests approach of his last two studio albums but failed to chart in the UK or the US. That same year, Liverpool's City Council announced plans to demolish Starr's birthplace, 9 Madryn Street, stating that it had "no historical significance". The LCC later announced that the building would be taken apart brick by brick and preserved.
Starr released the album Liverpool 8 in January 2008, coinciding with the start of Liverpool's year as the European Capital of Culture. Hudson was the initial producer of the recordings, but after a falling out with Starr, he was replaced by David A. Stewart. Starr performed the title track at the opening ceremony for Liverpool's appointment, but thereafter attracted controversy over his seemingly unflattering comments about his city of birth. Later that year, he was the object of further criticism in the press for posting a video on his website in which he harangued fans and autograph hunters for sending him items to sign.
In April 2009, he reunited with McCartney at the David Lynch Foundation's "Change Begins Within" benefit concert, held at New York's Radio City Music Hall. Having played his own set beforehand, Starr joined McCartney for the finale and performed "With a Little Help from My Friends", among other songs. Starr also appeared on-stage during Microsoft's June 2009 E3 press conference with Yoko Ono, McCartney and Olivia Harrison to promote The Beatles: Rock Band video game.
### 2010s
In 2010, Starr self-produced and released his fifteenth studio album, Y Not, which included the track "Walk with You" and featured a vocal contribution from McCartney. Later that year, he appeared during Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief as a celebrity phone operator. On 7 July 2010, he celebrated his 70th birthday at Radio City Music Hall with another All-Starr Band concert, topped with friends and family joining him on stage including Ono, his son Zak, and McCartney.
Starr recorded a cover of Buddy Holly's "Think It Over" for the 2011 tribute album Listen to Me: Buddy Holly. In January 2012, he released the album Ringo 2012. Later that year, he announced that his All-Starr Band would tour the Pacific Rim during 2013 with select dates in New Zealand, Australia and Japan; it was his first performance in Japan since 1996, and his debut in both New Zealand and Australia.
In January 2014, Starr joined McCartney for a special performance at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, where they performed the song "Queenie Eye". That summer he toured Canada and the US with an updated version of the Twelfth All-Starr Band, featuring multi-instrumentalist Warren Ham instead of saxophonist Mark Rivera. In July, Starr became involved in "#peacerocks", an anti-violence campaign started by fashion designer John Varvatos, in conjunction with the David Lynch Foundation. In September 2014, he won at the GQ Men of the Year Awards for his humanitarian work with the David Lynch Foundation.
In January 2015, Starr tweeted the title of his new studio album Postcards from Paradise. The album came a few weeks in advance of Starr's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and was released on 31 March 2015 to mixed to positive reviews. Later that month, Starr and his band announced a forthcoming Summer 2016 Tour of the US. Full production began in June 2016 in Syracuse.
On 7 July 2017 (his 77th birthday), Starr released "Give More Love" as a single, which was followed two months later by his nineteenth studio album, also titled Give More Love and issued by UM<sup>e</sup>. The album includes appearances by McCartney, as well as frequent collaborators such as Joe Walsh, David A. Stewart, Gary Nicholson and members of the All-Starr Band.
On 13 September 2019, Starr announced the upcoming release of his 20th album, What's My Name, to be released by UM<sup>e</sup> on 25 October 2019. He recorded the album in his home studio, Roccabella West in Los Angeles.
### 2020s
In celebration of his 80th birthday in July 2020, Starr organised a live-streamed concert featuring appearances by many of his friends and collaborators including McCartney, Walsh, Ben Harper, Dave Grohl, Sheryl Crow, Sheila E. and Willie Nelson. The show replaced his annual public birthday celebration at the Capitol Records Building, which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On 16 December 2020, Starr released the song "Here's to the Nights". An accompanying video was released on 18 December. The song of peace, love and friendship was written by Diane Warren and features a group of his friends, including McCartney, Joe Walsh, Corinne Bailey Rae, Eric Burdon, Sheryl Crow, Finneas, Dave Grohl, Ben Harper, Lenny Kravitz, Jenny Lewis, Steve Lukather, Chris Stapleton and Yola. The song was the lead single from his EP Zoom In, which was released on 19 March 2021 via UMe.
On 16 March 2021, Starr stated in an interview with Esquire that it was unlikely that he would record another full-length album, preferring to release EPs instead. On 24 September that year, he released the EP Change the World, a sequel to the previous EP Zoom In.
On 7 February 2022, Starr announced his intention to return to touring with his band for the first time since 2019. The tour was announced to run from 27 May to 26 June, though several concerts held in June would end up being postponed till October due to two members of the band catching COVID-19. These postponed events were added to the band's previously announced fall tour to be held in September and October. On 1 October, he cancelled a concert at the Four Winds New Buffalo casino due to an unspecified illness affecting his voice. Another concert to be held at Mystic Lake Casino Hotel the following day was also postponed. On 3 October, it was confirmed that Starr had tested positive for COVID-19, after which several shows in Canada were cancelled.
On 16 September 2022, Starr released the EP EP3. On 12 January 2023, Starr announced that he and the All-Starr Band would be touring in the US that spring, from 19 May to 17 June. In May 2023, a series of tour dates in the fall were also announced, from 17 September to 13 October. An upcoming EP by Starr, Rewind Forward, is scheduled for release on 13 October.
## Musicianship
### Influences
During his youth, Starr had been a devoted fan of skiffle and blues music, but by the time he joined the Texans in 1958, he had developed a preference for rock and roll. He was also influenced by country artists, including Hank Williams, Buck Owens and Hank Snow, and jazz artists such as Chico Hamilton and Yusef Lateef, whose compositional style inspired Starr's fluid and energetic drum fills and grooves. While reflecting on Buddy Rich, Starr commented: "He does things with one hand that I can't do with nine, but that's technique. Everyone I talk to says 'What about Buddy Rich?' Well, what about him? Because he doesn't turn me on." He stated that he "was never really into drummers", but identified Cozy Cole's 1958 cover of Benny Goodman's "Topsy Part Two" as "the one drum record" he bought.
Starr's first musical hero was Gene Autry, about whom he commented: "I remember getting shivers up my back when he sang, 'South of the Border'". By the early 1960s he had become an ardent fan of Lee Dorsey. In November 1964, Starr told Melody Maker: "Our music is second-hand versions of negro music ... Ninety per cent of the music I like is coloured."
### Drums
Starr said of his drumming: "I'm no good on the technical things ... I'm your basic offbeat drummer with funny fills ... because I'm really left-handed playing a right-handed kit. I can't roll around the drums because of that." Beatles producer George Martin said: "Ringo hit good and hard and used the tom-tom well, even though he couldn't do a roll to save his life", but later said, "He's got tremendous feel. He always helped us to hit the right tempo for a song, and gave it that support – that rock-solid back-beat – that made the recording of all the Beatles' songs that much easier." Starr said he did not believe the drummer's role was to "interpret the song". Instead, comparing his drumming to painting, he said: "I am the foundation, and then I put a bit of glow here and there ... If there's a gap, I want to be good enough to fill it."
In 2011, Rolling Stone readers voted Starr the fifth-greatest drummer of all time. Journalist Robyn Flans wrote for the Percussive Arts Society: "I cannot count the number of drummers who have told me that Ringo inspired their passion for drums". Drummer Steve Smith said:
> Before Ringo, drum stars were measured by their soloing ability and virtuosity. Ringo's popularity brought forth a new paradigm in how the public saw drummers. We started to see the drummer as an equal participant in the compositional aspect. One of Ringo's great qualities was that he composed unique, stylistic drum parts for the Beatles' songs. His parts are so signature to the songs that you can listen to a Ringo drum part without the rest of the music and still identify the song.
Starr said his favourite drummer is Jim Keltner, with whom he first played at the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971. The pair subsequently played drums together on some of Harrison's recordings during the 1970s, on Ringo and other albums by Starr, and on the early All-Starr Band tours. For Ringo's Rotogravure in 1976, Starr credited himself as "Thunder" and Keltner as "Lightnin'".
Starr influenced Genesis drummer Phil Collins, who said: "I think he's vastly underrated, Ringo. The drum fills on 'A Day in the Life' are very, very complex things. You could take a great drummer from today and say, 'I want it like that', and they really wouldn't know what to do." Collins said his drumming on the 1983 Genesis song "That's All" was an affectionate attempt at a "Ringo Starr drum part".
In an often-repeated but apocryphal story, when asked if Starr was the best drummer in the world, Lennon quipped that he "wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles". The line actually comes from a 1981 episode of the BBC Radio 4 comedy series Radio Active, and gained more prominence when it was used by the television comedian Jasper Carrott in 1983, three years after Lennon's death. In September 1980, Lennon told Rolling Stone that Starr was a "damn good drummer" whose talent would have surfaced even without the Beatles.
Tjinder Singh of the indie rock band Cornershop said Starr was a pioneering drummer: "There was a time when the common consensus was that Ringo couldn't play. What's that all about? He's totally unique, a one-off, and hip hop has a lot to thank him for." In his book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn says there were fewer than a dozen occasions in the Beatles' eight-year recording career where session breakdowns were caused by Starr making a mistake, while the vast majority of takes were stopped due to mistakes by the other Beatles. Starr influenced various modern drumming techniques, such as the matched grip, tuning the drums lower, and using muffling devices on tonal rings. According to Ken Micallef and Donnie Marshall, co-authors of Classic Rock Drummers: "Ringo's fat tom sounds and delicate cymbal work were imitated by thousands of drummers."
In 2021, Starr announced a ten-part MasterClass course called "Drumming and Creative Collaboration".
### Vocals
Starr sang lead vocals for a song on most of the Beatles' studio albums as part of an attempt to establish a vocal personality for each band member. In many cases, Lennon or McCartney wrote the lyrics and melody especially for him, as they did for "Yellow Submarine" from Revolver and "With a Little Help from My Friends" on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. These melodies were tailored to Starr's limited baritone vocal range. Because of his distinctive voice, Starr rarely performed backing vocals during his time with the Beatles, but they can be heard on songs such as "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Carry That Weight". He is also the lead vocalist on his compositions "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden". In addition, he sang lead on "I Wanna Be Your Man", "Boys", "Matchbox", "Honey Don't", "Act Naturally", "Good Night" and "What Goes On".
### Songwriting
Starr's idiosyncratic turns of phrase or "Ringoisms", such as "a hard day's night" and "tomorrow never knows", were used as song titles by the Beatles, particularly by Lennon. McCartney commented: "Ringo would do these little malapropisms, he would say things slightly wrong, like people do, but his were always wonderful, very lyrical ... they were sort of magic." Starr also occasionally contributed lyrics to unfinished Lennon–McCartney songs, such as the line "darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there" in "Eleanor Rigby".
Starr is credited as the sole composer of two Beatles songs: "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden", the latter written with assistance from Harrison. While promoting the Abbey Road album in 1969, Harrison recognised Starr's lyrics to "Octopus's Garden" as an unwittingly profound message about finding inner peace, and therefore an example of how "Ringo writes his cosmic songs without knowing it." Starr is also credited as a co-writer of "What Goes On", "Flying" and "Dig It". On material issued after the band's break-up, he received a writing credit for "Taking a Trip to Carolina" and joint songwriting credits with the other Beatles for "12-Bar Original", "Los Paranoias", "Christmas Time (Is Here Again)", "Suzy Parker" (from the Let It Be film) and "Jessie's Dream" (from the Magical Mystery Tour film).
In a 2003 interview, Starr discussed Harrison's input in his songwriting and said: "I was great at writing two verses and a chorus – I'm still pretty good at that. Finishing songs is not my forte." Harrison helped Starr complete two of his biggest hit songs, "It Don't Come Easy" and "Back Off Boogaloo", although he only accepted a credit for "Photograph", which they wrote together in France. Starting with the Ringo album in 1973, Starr shared a songwriting partnership with Vini Poncia. One of the pair's first collaborations was "Oh My My". Over half of the songs on Ringo the 4th were Starkey–Poncia compositions, but the partnership produced just two more songs, released on Bad Boy in 1978.
## Personal life
Starr met hairdresser Maureen Cox in 1962, the same week that he joined the Beatles. They married in February 1965. Beatles manager Brian Epstein was best man and Starr's stepfather Harry Graves and fellow Beatle George Harrison were witnesses. Their marriage became the subject of the novelty song "Treat Him Tender, Maureen" by the Chicklettes. The couple had three children: Zak (born 13 September 1965), Jason (born 19 August 1967) and Lee (born 11 November 1970). In 1971, Starr purchased Lennon's home Tittenhurst Park at Sunninghill in Berkshire and moved his family there. The couple divorced in 1975 following Starr's repeated infidelities. Maureen died from leukaemia at age 48 in 1994.
Starr met actress Barbara Bach in 1980 on the set of the film Caveman, and they were married at Marylebone Town Hall on 27 April 1981. In 1985, he was the first of the Beatles to become a grandfather upon the birth of Zak's daughter Tatia Jayne Starkey. Zak is also a drummer, and he spent time with the Who's Keith Moon during his father's regular absences; he has performed with his father during some All-Starr Band tours. Starr has eight grandchildren: two from Zak, three from Jason, and three from Lee. In 2016, he was the first Beatle to become a great-grandfather.
Starr and Bach split their time between homes in Cranleigh, Los Angeles, and Monte Carlo. He was listed at number 56 in the Sunday Times Rich List 2011 with an estimated personal wealth of £150 million. In 2012, he was estimated to be the wealthiest drummer in the world. In 2014, Starr announced that his 200-acre Surrey estate at Rydinghurst was for sale, with its Grade II-listed Jacobean house. However, he retains a property in the London district of Chelsea off King's Road, and he and Bach continue to divide their time between London and Los Angeles.
In December 2015, Starr and Bach auctioned some of their personal and professional items via Julien's Auctions in Los Angeles. The collection included Starr's first Ludwig Black Oyster Pearl drum kit, instruments given to him by Harrison, Lennon, and Marc Bolan, and a first-pressing copy of the Beatles' White Album numbered "0000001". The auction raised over \$9 million, a portion of which was set aside for the Lotus Foundation, a charity founded by Starr and Bach.
In 2016, Starr expressed his support for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. "I thought the European Union was a great idea," he said, "but I didn't see it going anywhere lately." In 2017, he described his impatience for Britain to "get on with" Brexit, declaring that "to be in control of your country is a good move".
In October 2021, Starr was named in the Pandora Papers which allege a secret financial deal of politicians and celebrities using tax havens in an effort to avoid the payment of owed taxes.
Starr is a vegetarian and meditates daily. His catchphrase and motto for life is "peace and love".
## Awards and honours
Starr and the other members of the Beatles were appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1965 Birthday Honours; they received their insignia from Queen Elizabeth II at an investiture at Buckingham Palace on 26 October. He and the other Beatles were collectively nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer for their performances in the 1964 film A Hard Day's Night. In 1971, the Beatles received an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score for the film Let It Be. The minor planet 4150 Starr, discovered on 31 August 1984 by Brian A. Skiff at the Anderson Mesa Station of the Lowell Observatory, was named in Starr's honour. Starr was nominated for a 1989 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series for his role as Mr. Conductor in the television series Shining Time Station.
In 2015, 27 years after he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the Beatles, Starr became the last Beatle to be inducted for a solo career. Unlike the other three Beatles who were inducted within the "Performers" category, Starr was inducted within the "Musical Excellence" category. During the 50th Grammy Awards, Starr, George Martin and his son Giles accepted the Best Compilation Soundtrack award for Love. On 9 November 2008, Starr accepted a Diamond Award on behalf of the Beatles during the 2008 World Music Awards ceremony in Monaco. On 8 February 2010, he was honoured with the 2,401st star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. It is located at 1750 North Vine Street, in front of the Capitol Records building, as are the stars for Lennon, McCartney and Harrison.
Starr was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2018 New Year Honours for services to music. He was knighted in an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge on 20 March 2018.
In 2022, Starr received an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music for his "immeasurable impact on music, film and television, and popular culture".
## Film career
Starr has received praise from critics and movie industry professionals regarding his acting; director and producer Walter Shenson called him "a superb actor, an absolute natural". By the mid-1960s, Starr had become a connoisseur of film. In addition to his roles in A Hard Day's Night (1964), Help! (1965), Magical Mystery Tour (1967) and Let It Be (1970), Starr also acted in Candy (1968), The Magic Christian (1969), Blindman (1971), Son of Dracula (1974) and Caveman (1981). In 1971, he starred as Larry the Dwarf in Frank Zappa's 200 Motels and was featured in Harry Nilsson's animated film The Point! He co-starred in That'll Be the Day (1973) as a Teddy Boy and appeared in The Last Waltz, the Martin Scorsese documentary film about the 1976 farewell concert of the Band.
Starr played the Pope in Ken Russell's Lisztomania (1975), and a fictionalised version of himself in McCartney's Give My Regards to Broad Street in 1984. Starr appeared as himself and a downtrodden alter-ego Ognir Rrats in Ringo (1978), an American-made television comedy film based loosely on The Prince and the Pauper. For the 1979 documentary film on the Who, The Kids Are Alright, Starr appeared in interview segments with fellow drummer Keith Moon.
## Discography
Since the breakup of the Beatles, Starr has released 20 solo studio albums:
- Sentimental Journey (1970)
- Beaucoups of Blues (1970)
- Ringo (1973)
- Goodnight Vienna (1974)
- Ringo's Rotogravure (1976)
- Ringo the 4th (1977)
- Bad Boy (1978)
- Stop and Smell the Roses (1981)
- Old Wave (1983)
- Time Takes Time (1992)
- Vertical Man (1998)
- I Wanna Be Santa Claus (1999)
- Ringo Rama (2003)
- Choose Love (2005)
- Liverpool 8 (2008)
- Y Not (2010)
- Ringo 2012 (2012)
- Postcards from Paradise (2015)
- Give More Love (2017)
- What's My Name (2019)
## Books
- Postcards from the Boys (2004)
- Octopus's Garden (2014)
- Photograph (2015)
|
68,056,823 |
Gurl.com
| 1,171,418,385 |
Former social networking website
|
[
"American health websites",
"American women's websites",
"Community websites",
"Defunct American websites",
"Dot-com bubble",
"English-language websites",
"Feminism and sexuality",
"Feminist mass media",
"Feminist websites",
"Free web hosting services",
"Internet forums",
"Internet properties disestablished in 2018",
"Internet properties established in 1996",
"Online magazines published in the United States",
"Sex education advocates",
"Sex education in the United States",
"Sex-positive feminism",
"Third-wave feminism",
"Zines"
] |
Gurl.com (pronounced "girl dot com"; formerly stylized as gURL.com from 1996 to 2011) was an American website for teenage girls that was online from 1996 to 2018. It was created by Rebecca Odes, Esther Drill, and Heather McDonald as a resource centered on teen advice, body image, female sexuality, and other teen-related concerns. First published as an online zine, it later expanded into an online community. At one point, it provided a free e-mail and web hosting service, known as Gurlmail and Gurlpages respectively.
Clothing retailer Delia's purchased the site in 1997; it was later sold to PriMedia in 2001, who in turn sold it to iVillage in 2003. Alloy (later rebranded as Defy Media) acquired it from iVillage in 2009. The website ceased activity after Defy Media's closure in 2018 and was acquired by Hearst Magazines, who redirected it to Seventeen'''s website.
As one of the first major websites aimed at teenage girls in the United States, Gurl.com was heavily associated with zine culture and third-wave feminism; it was also used in academia to study the online behavior of teenage girls. Unlike teen magazines in the 1990s, Gurl.com was known for its humorous tone, unconventional approach to teen-related topics compared to mainstream media, and contributions from its audience (such as editorials and artwork). The popularity of Gurl.com led the creators to co-author three teen advice books, the first being Deal With It! A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain, and Life as a gURL (1999).
Gurl.com won the I.D. Magazine Award for Interactive Media in 1997 and a Webby Award in 1998; its founders received the New York Magazine Award in 1997 for their work on the website. Gurl.com was also met with privacy concerns, as well as criticism from conservative and anti-pornography advocates for its sex-positive stance and sex education resources.
## History
Rebecca Odes and Esther Drill, childhood friends from West Orange, New Jersey, conceived the idea of managing a magazine while they were in high school, as teenagers in the 1980s. Dissatisfied with the teen magazines available to them growing up, they sought to curate alternative media that would properly address the concerns of teenage girls. In 1995, while they were graduate students at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, they, along with fellow student Heather McDonald, decided to form a female-positive online space aimed at teenagers, as they felt the Internet lacked such communities in the 1990s. They wanted to create an uncensored resource for girls, with features similar to those in a teen magazine, but also wanted to build a community centered on female interests, with peer advice and opinions from other girls. Gurl.com was then created as Odes, Drill, and McDonald's Master's Thesis project. The name of the website combined the word "girl" with the acronym "URL". The logo of the website contained a closed fist with painted nails. The website was launched in May 1996.
After Gurl.com's initial launch, the website was included as a member of EstroNet, a web portal designed to drive traffic to independently owned websites created by women. The clothing retailer Delia's approached Odes, Drill, and McDonald with an acquisition offer and purchased the website in December 1997. Odes, Drill, and McDonald continued to work on the website from Delia's offices. Gurl.com was included as part of the website network iTurf (Delia's online subsidiary) in an attempt to launch an e-commerce market targeting Generation Y. Gurl.com was initially launched as a non-commercial website, but it began selling merchandise from Delia's catalogue beginning in May 1998. On September 2, 1999, iTurf partnered with America Online to feature content from Gurl.com on their website in a section called AOgirL. In May 2000, Gurl.com sponsored Take Back the Decks: An Evening of Women in Underground Music, an all-female music festival held at Lighthouse Frying Pan in New York City, New York. From November 16 to November 21, 2000, Gurl.com held the Movers, Shakers, and Media Makers Film Festival at the Pioneer Theater in East Village, Manhattan, with Kim Peirce, Christine Vachon, and Nancy Savoca as guests.
Following the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Delia's sold or closed down all of their Internet properties in late November 2000, with the exception of Gurl.com. On November 23, 2000, Gurl.com was redesigned with less focus on e-commerce. In May 2001, PriMedia, the parent company of Seventeen, acquired Gurl.com in an attempt to expand its teen-centered properties. In August 2003, while downsizing and paying off its debts, PriMedia sold Gurl.com to iVillage, with Drill and McDonald joining staff. In 2005, Gurl.com opened its first mobile store powered by M-Qube, selling ringtones and wallpapers for mobile phones.
In 2009, Alloy acquired Gurl.com as part of their strategy to build a digital entertainment hub aimed at teenagers and young adults. Alloy later relaunched Gurl.com in 2011 with a new logo, containing a cursive font with the "u" shaped as a heart. Once Alloy merged with Breaker Media and became Defy Media in 2013, Gurl.com focused on video content and had a YouTube channel. The website ceased activity after 2018 with the closure of Defy Media. Once Gurl.com was redirected to Seventeen's website, Hearst Magazines later announced on February 15, 2019 that they acquired Clevver, including Gurl.com, which Defy Media had grouped with Clevver's network. In 2020, Jamie Petitto, who had been a video editor for Gurl.com from 2012 until its closure, stated in a video post on her social media accounts that Gurl.com had stopped updating since 2017. She also stated that she had offered to buy Gurl.com from Defy Media but could not meet their demand of \$3 million.
## Content
### Zine
Gurl.com drew inspiration from teen magazines, and its initial launch used a zine format. The website's intended demographic was girls aged 13 or older. Unlike contemporary online communities aimed at young women in the 1990s, Gurl.com had an edgier appearance, using a frank and nonjudgmental approach to address topics such as dating, health, and beauty. Gurl.com also directly addressed topics such as female sexuality, which according to The Cut was not commonly seen in traditional media aimed at teenagers in the 1990s. Early content parodied and satirized mainstream teen magazines. The website initially used drawings of women instead of photos to emphasize body positivity and to avoid body image concerns.
Content on the website was organized into topics such as "Deal With It" (daily life), "Looks Aren't Everything" (fashion and beauty), "Where Do I Go From Here?" (career), and sports. When Gurl.com was given a new design on November 23, 2000, "Stop, Look, and Listen" (shopping) and "Movers, Shakers, and Media Makers" (celebrities and other women in media) were added as two new sections. "The Boob Files" had first-person essays written about breasts that were submitted by contributors. The website also had an advice column run by McDonald, titled "Help Me, Heather."
Because Odes, Drill, and McDonald believed that girls prefer creating to being consumers, the website allowed contributions from its users, such as comics, poems, opinions on current events, and reviews. For the same reason, they limited contributions from celebrities, as the website was intended to be a counter against aspirational fantasy. One of Gurl.com's notable contributions from its readers was its comics section, which included serializations such as Those Sucky Emotions and Mizbehavior, both initially listed in the "Deal With It" topic. Other comics included Girl Stories by Lauren Weinstein; Fifteen Revolutions and Rachel the Great & Tuna by Rachel Nabors; and Girls in Love and I Heart Sex by Martina Fugazzotto.
During Alloy's (later rebranded as Defy Media) acquisition of Gurl.com, the company shifted the website's focus towards video editorials. Jamie Petitto was hired to be a host for the video content from 2012 to 2017. She primarily hosted a DIY video series called Do It, Gurl on Gurl.com's YouTube channel, which was nominated for a Streamy Award in 2013.
### Features
While Gurl.com could be accessed without an account, registration was required to submit content and participate in the chat room and message board. Registration was free, and users were strongly advised to create a non-identifying alias to keep them anonymous. The message board, known as the "Shout-out Boards", were where users could interact with each other and exchange advice. Gurl.com also had an online avatar-based text chat room server, known as the Gurl Palace, accessible through the computer program The Palace.
As well as messaging features, Gurl.com featured online games. Some of the early game content satirized beauty standards, such as the game "Hairy Gurl". Later games stuck to Gurl.com's concept of acknowledging girls as creators instead of consumers, such as "Make Your Own Rock Band", "Make Your Own Reality TV Show", and "Try the Prom Dress Selector". It also had personality quizzes, with a well-documented one being "Paper Doll Psychology", where users could dress a paper doll and receive an assessment on their personality based on their clothing choices.
During Delia's ownership from 1997 to 2001, Gurl.com provided an e-mail service through Gurlmail.com and web hosting through Gurlpages.com, both free services owned by Lycos. Many users used Gurlpages to host zines, particularly about female sexuality. Others used Gurlpages to host their creative works, such as poetry, and rants about their daily lives. Websites hosted on Gurlpages were part of Gurl.com's network and allowed users to easily connect with one another.
### Publications
Following the success of Gurl.com, Odes, Drill, and McDonald received a book deal through a partnership with Scholastic. They published a series of teen advice books based on the editorial content on the website and also included conversations found on Gurl.com's message board. The first book, Deal With It! A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain, and Life as a gURL, was released on September 1, 1999; it offered advice on puberty, queer identities, sex, eating disorders, drug use, and mental health, with a list of resources on each topic. To promote the book, Odes, Drill, and McDonald launched an accompanying website, DealWithIt.com, which hosted an online version of the resources. Deal With It! was received favorably, most reviewers praising the book as a valuable resource about sexual health as well as its tone and presentation; some critics cautioned that parents might not find some of the content appropriate and advised that the book was not suitable for younger readers. Deal With It! was listed at \#82 on the American Library Association's Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books from 2000 to 2009, with several organizations challenging the book due to its LGBT-friendly and sex-positive content. Deal With It! became a national bestseller, selling 100,000 copies in the United States by January 2000, and was awarded the I.D. Magazine Award in the Graphics category in July 2000.
Deal With It! was followed by The Looks Book: A Whole New Approach to Beauty, Body Image, and Style on October 1, 2002, which examined beauty standards throughout the ages. Publishers Weekly described the artwork as "whimsical" and the book as both intelligent and humorous, suggesting that it presented a message of empowerment.
The final book, Where Do I Go from Here?: Getting a Life After High School, was released in 2004. The book discussed topics such as entering adulthood, managing finances, alternatives to college, and other social issues in college life, such as incompatible roommates, date rape, and binge drinking. Britta Hays from Tampa Bay Times praised the book for profiling options after high school without bias. Harry Wessel from The Orlando Sentinel described the book as one that would help teenagers make good choices about their future and said that, despite its branding, its advice was also applicable to men.
## Analysis
### Critical reception
Gurl.com was praised for being a positive community on topics such as female sexuality, queer identity, and body positivity, as well as its inclusion of peer advice from teenage girls, by media outlets such as The Cut, Glamour, and Los Angeles Times. Janelle Brown from Salon.com noted that the accessibility of sex education online had prepared young girls and also allowed them their own sexual agency. Despite the acclaim, Los Angeles Times and Common Sense Media suggested Gurl.com was more appropriate for an older audience. In 1999, the website had approximately 800,000 visitors per month. In 2001, approximately 40% of girls who regularly used the Internet in the United States visited the website.
Gurl.com was also met with criticisms over its sex-positive stance from conservative groups. In 1999, Salon.com stated that anti-pornography advocates cited concerns that young girls discussing and having accessibility to sex information would lead to an increase in underage sexual activity and be harmful to their development. Abstinence advocate Coleen Kelly Mast argued that Gurl.com gave a one-sided view of human sexuality, claiming that the information would not help lead to "satisfaction in marriage". Carol Platt Liebau named Gurl.com as part of her criticisms against the United States' "sex-obsessed" culture, criticizing the website for excluding religious and moral discussions about sex as well as for ignoring the opinions of teenage girls who chose to be abstinent. Miriam Grossman included Gurl.com and Deal With It! in her criticisms of sex education, calling the website "offensive material" for including information such as BDSM, sex positions, and gender identities.
Among other criticisms, parents and scholars expressed concern over Gurl.com collecting information from its users and disclosing them to third-party advertisers to study consumer habits, with The American Prospect naming their personality quizzes as an example of acquiring personal data. In 2015, the Canadian Broadcasting Company included Gurl.com among 1,494 websites and mobile apps that were privacy concerns, as it allowed children to unknowingly list too much information about themselves. Anita Hamilton from Time surveyed several female high school students in Manhattan, New York, and out of the four teen websites shown to them, the students liked Gurl.com the least, citing its "cluttered" design as partly the reason.
### Awards
### Use in academia
Gurl.com has been used in studies about online behaviors and sexual identities of teenage girls. In a study conducted by Media Metrix and Jupiter Communications in 2000, there was a 125% growth of girls aged 12–17 years old using the Internet, which was partially credited to Gurl.com. In a study done by professors Barbara Duncan and Kevin Leander in the same year, they observed that because Gurl.com already had an established network, girls who hosted their website at Gurlpages could easily connect with one another and receive feedback on their work. In 2005, scholar Sharon Mazzarella noted that Gurl.com was among the websites that helped girls be creative and empowered, though there was later increasing moral panic surrounding how harmful messages may influence them.
Scholars Ashley D. Grisso and David Weiss noted that users on Gurl.com's message board often discussed their interest in sex, usually respectfully as per the established norm on the website. In spite of this, many discussions about sex on the website were related to male pleasure. Gurl.com encouraged sexual expression, but some users were quick to shame others who disapproved of premarital sex or discussed their sex lives in detail, downplaying individual sexual agency. A study published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication'' in 2006 found Gurl.com to be the best example of a female-centric website that encouraged critical thinking skills in young girls through their discussions on current events.
Gurl.com has also been used as an example of the commercialization of the Internet, as well as recognizing young women from Generation Y as a viable marketing demographic. It was named as a site that inspired the growth of websites owned by teenage girls, creating a potential advertising market worth US\$15 billion in 2000. Duncan and Leander argued that Gurl.com created spaces of both "resistance and conformity", as people who had websites on Gurlpages both expressed themselves in creative writing yet also listed personal information identifying their demographics and consumer habits. Scholar Leslie Regan Shade used Gurl.com as an example of commodification and commercialization of a community in the 1990s, when women were being recognized as a marketing demographic for e-commerce. Echoing Duncan and Leander, she commented that while Gurl.com had a disclaimer stating that their views do not represent their advertisers, the website may have been "packaged for a homogeneous idyllic audience commodity", which contrasts with the "utopian sentiments" of an online community. Gurl.com was used as an example of stealth marketing in teaching media literacy about advertising.
## Legacy
Gurl.com is known for being one of the first major websites aimed at teenage girls in the United States during the 1990s. It was also known for its association and contributions to third-wave feminism, riot grrl, and zine culture in the 1990s. Gurl.com's honest and frank discussions about teen issues inspired teen magazines and other female-centered websites to adopt a similar approach. Its branding was also tied to Generation Y identity.
|
709,340 |
Suzanne Lenglen
| 1,168,182,679 |
French tennis player (1899–1938)
|
[
"1899 births",
"1938 deaths",
"20th-century French women",
"Burials at Saint-Ouen Cemetery",
"Deaths from cancer in France",
"Deaths from leukemia",
"Deaths from pernicious anemia",
"French Championships (tennis) champions",
"French female tennis players",
"Grand Slam (tennis) champions in mixed doubles",
"Grand Slam (tennis) champions in women's doubles",
"Grand Slam (tennis) champions in women's singles",
"International Tennis Hall of Fame inductees",
"Medalists at the 1920 Summer Olympics",
"Olympic bronze medalists for France",
"Olympic gold medalists for France",
"Olympic medalists in tennis",
"Olympic tennis players for France",
"Professional tennis players before the Open Era",
"Suzanne Lenglen",
"Tennis players at the 1920 Summer Olympics",
"Tennis players from Paris",
"Wimbledon champions (pre-Open Era)",
"World number 1 ranked female tennis players"
] |
Suzanne Rachel Flore Lenglen (; 24 May 1899 – 4 July 1938) was a French tennis player. She was the inaugural world No. 1 from 1921 to 1926, winning eight Grand Slam titles in singles and twenty-one in total. She was also a four-time World Hard Court Champion in singles, and ten times in total. Lenglen won six Wimbledon singles titles, including five in a row from 1919 to 1923, and was the champion in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles at the first two open French Championships in 1925 and 1926. In doubles, she was undefeated with her usual partner Elizabeth Ryan, highlighted by another six titles at Wimbledon. Lenglen was the first leading amateur to turn professional. She ranked as the greatest women's tennis player from the amateur era in the 100 Greatest of All Time series on the Tennis Channel in 2012.
Coached by her father Charles throughout her career, Lenglen began playing tennis at age 11, becoming the youngest major champion in history with her 1914 World Hard Court Championship title at age 15. This success, along with her balletic playing style and brash personality, helped make Lenglen a national heroine in a country coping with the aftermath of World War I. After the war had delayed her career four years, Lenglen was largely unchallenged. She won her Wimbledon debut in 1919 in the second-longest final in history, the only one of her major singles finals she did not win by a lopsided scoreline. Her only post-war loss came in a retirement against Molla Mallory, her only amateur match in the United States. Afterwards, she began a 179-match win streak, during which she defeated Helen Wills in the high-profile Match of the Century in 1926. Following a misunderstanding at Wimbledon later that year, Lenglen abruptly retired from amateur tennis, signing to headline a professional tour in the United States beginning that same year.
Referred to by the French press as La Divine (The Goddess), Lenglen revolutionised the sport by integrating the aggressive style of men's tennis into the women's game and breaking the convention of women competing in clothing unsuitable for tennis. She incorporated fashion into her matches, highlighted by her signature bandeau headwear. Lenglen is recognised as the first female athlete to become a global sport celebrity and her popularity led Wimbledon to move to its larger modern-day venue. Her professional tours laid the foundation for the series of men's professional tours that continued until the Open Era, and led to the first major men's professional tournament the following year. Lenglen was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1978, and the second show court at the site of the French Open is named in her honour.
## Early life and background
Suzanne Rachel Flore Lenglen was born in the 16th arrondissement of Paris on 24 May 1899 to Charles and Anaïs Lenglen (née Dhainault). She had a younger brother who did not live past the age of three. Lenglen's father was a pharmacist who became wealthy by inheriting a horse-drawn omnibus company from his father. Several years after Suzanne was born, her father sold the omnibus business, after which he relocated the family to Marest-sur-Matz near Compiègne in northern France in 1904. They spent their winters in Nice on the French Riviera in a villa across the street from the Nice Lawn Tennis Club. By the time Lenglen was eight, she excelled at a variety of sports, including swimming and cycling. In particular, she enjoyed diabolo, a game involving balancing a spinning top on a string with two attached sticks. During the winter, Lenglen performed diabolo routines in front of large crowds on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. Her father credited her confidence to play tennis in large stadiums to her experience as a diabolo performer.
Lenglen's father attended tennis tournaments on the Riviera circuit, where the world's best players competed in the first half of the year. Having played the sport recreationally, he bought Lenglen a racket from a toy shop in June 1910 shortly after she had turned 11 years old, and set up a makeshift court on the lawn of their house. She quickly showed enough skill to convince her father to get her a proper racket from a tennis manufacturer within a month. He then developed training exercises and played against his daughter. Three months later, Lenglen travelled to Paris to play on a proper clay court owned by her father's friend, Dr. Cizelly. At Cizelly's recommendation, she entered a local high-level tournament in Chantilly. In the singles handicap event, Lenglen won four rounds and finished in second place.
Lenglen's success at the Chantilly tournament prompted her father to train her more seriously. He studied the leading male and female players and decided to teach Lenglen the tactics from the men's game, which were more aggressive than the women's style of slowly constructing points from the baseline. When the family returned to Nice towards the end of autumn, her father arranged for her to play twice a week at the Nice Lawn Tennis Club even though children had never been allowed on the courts, and had her practise with leading male players at the club. Lenglen began training with Joseph Negro, the club's teaching professional. Negro had a wide variety of shots in his repertoire and trained Lenglen to play the same way. As Lenglen's primary coach, her father employed harsh and rigorous methods, saying, "I was a hard taskmaster, and although my advice was always well intentioned, my criticisms were at times severe, and occasionally intemperate." Lenglen's parents watched her matches and discussed her minute errors between themselves throughout, showing restraint in their criticisms only when she was sick. As a result, Lenglen became comfortable with appearing ill, which made it difficult for others to tell if she was sick.
## Amateur career
### 1912–13: Maiden titles
Lenglen entered her first non-handicap singles event in July 1912 at the Compiègne Championships near her hometown, her only regular event of the year. She won her debut match in the quarterfinals before losing her semifinal to Jeanne Matthey. She also played in the singles and mixed doubles handicap events, winning both of them. When Lenglen returned to Nice in 1913, she entered a handicap doubles event in Monte Carlo with Elizabeth Ryan, an American who had moved to England a year earlier. Although they lost the final in three sets, Ryan became Lenglen's most frequent doubles partner and the pair never lost another match. Lenglen's success at handicap events led her to enter more regular events in the rest of 1913. She debuted at the South of France Championships at the Nice Club in March, winning only one match. Nonetheless, when Lenglen returned to Compiègne, she won her first two regular singles titles, both within a few weeks of her 14th birthday. After losing to Matthey again at both of her events in July, the latter of which by default, Lenglen rebounded to win titles in her last two singles events of the year.
### 1914: World Hard Court champion
Back on the Riviera in 1914, Lenglen focused on regular events. Her victory in singles against the high-ranking British player Ruth Winch was regarded as a huge surprise by the tennis community. However, Lenglen still struggled at larger tournaments early in the year, losing to Ryan in the quarterfinals at Monte Carlo and six-time Wimbledon champion Dorothea Lambert Chambers in the semifinals at the South of France Championships. In May, Lenglen was invited to enter the French Championships, which was restricted to French players. The format gave the defending champion a bye until the final match, known as the challenge round. In that match, they faced the winner of the All Comers' competition, a standard tournament bracket for the remaining players. Lenglen won the All Comers' singles draw of six players to make it to the challenge round against Marguerite Broquedis. Despite winning the first set, she lost the match. This was the last time in Lenglen's career she lost a completed singles match, and the only time she lost a singles final other than by default. Although she also lost the doubles challenge round at the tournament to Blanche and Suzanne Amblard, Lenglen won the mixed doubles title with Max Decugis as her partner.
Lenglen's performance at the French Championships set the stage for her debut at the World Hard Court Championships, one of the major tournaments recognised by the International Lawn Tennis Federation at the time. She won the singles final against Germaine Golding for her first major title. The only set she lost during the event was to Suzanne Amblard in the semifinals. Her volleying ability was instrumental in defeating Amblard, and her ability to outlast Golding in long rallies gave her the advantage in the final. Lenglen also won the doubles title with Ryan over the Amblard sisters without dropping a game in the final. She finished runner-up in mixed doubles to Ryan and Decugis. Following the World Hard Court Championships, Lenglen could have debuted at Wimbledon, but her father decided against it. He did not like her chances of defeating Lambert Chambers on grass, a surface on which she had never competed, given that she had already lost to her earlier in the year on clay.
### World War I hiatus
After World War I began in August 1914, tournaments ceased, interfering with Lenglen's father's plan for her to enter Wimbledon in 1915. During the war, Lenglen's family lived at their home in Nice, an area less affected by the war than northern France. Although there were no tournaments, Lenglen had plenty of opportunity to train in Nice. Soldiers came to the Riviera to temporarily avoid the war, including leading tennis players such as two-time United States national champions R. Norris Williams and Clarence Griffin. These players competed in charity exhibitions primarily in Cannes to raise money for the French Red Cross. Lenglen participated and had the opportunity to play singles matches against male players.
### 1919: Classic Wimbledon final
Many tournaments resumed in 1919, following the end of World War I. Lenglen won nine singles titles in ten events, all four of her doubles events, and eight mixed doubles titles in ten events. She won the South of France Championships in March without dropping a game in any of her four matches. Although the French Championships and World Hard Court Championships did not return until the following year, Lenglen was able to debut at Wimbledon in July. She won the six-round All Comers' bracket, losing only six games in the first four rounds. Her biggest challenge in the All Comers' competition was her doubles partner Ryan, who saved match points and levelled the second set of their semifinal at five games, losing only after an hour-long rain delay. Although the 20-year-old Lenglen was considered a favourite against the 40-year-old Lambert Chambers in the challenge round, Lambert Chambers was able to trouble Lenglen with well-placed drop shots. Lenglen won the first set 10–8 after both players saved two set points. After saving two match points, Lenglen won the third set 9–7 for her first Wimbledon title. The match set the record for most games in a Wimbledon women's singles final with 44, since surpassed only by the 1970 final between Margaret Court and Billie Jean King. More than 8,000 people attended the match, well above the seating capacity of 3,500 on Centre Court. Lenglen defeated Lambert Chambers and Ethel Larcombe again in the doubles final with Ryan. She already lost to Ryan and Randolph Lycett in her mixed doubles quarterfinal, her only loss of the year in any discipline aside from defaults.
### 1920: Olympic champion
Lenglen began 1920 with five singles titles on the Riviera, three of which she won in lopsided finals against Ryan. However, Ryan was able to defeat Lenglen in mixed doubles at Cannes in windy conditions, Lenglen's only mixed doubles loss of the year. Although the World Hard Court Championships returned in May, Lenglen withdrew due to illness. She recovered in time for the French Championships two weeks later and won the singles, doubles, and mixed doubles titles to complete a triple crown. Lenglen easily made it to the challenge round in singles, where she defeated Broquedis in a rematch of the 1914 final. She won the doubles event with Élisabeth d'Ayen and defended her mixed doubles title with Decugis, only needing to play the challenge round.
Lenglen's next event was Wimbledon. Lambert Chambers won the All Comers' final to set up a rematch of the previous year's final. Although the match was expected to be close again and began 2–2, Lenglen won ten of the last eleven games for her second consecutive Wimbledon singles title. She won the triple crown, taking the doubles with Ryan and the mixed doubles with Australian Gerald Patterson. The doubles final was also a rematch of the previous year's final against Lambert Chambers and Larcombe, and the mixed doubles victory came against defending champions Ryan and Lycett. Lenglen's decision to partner with Patterson led to the Fédération Française de Lawn Tennis (FFLT) threatening to not pay her expenses for the Wimbledon trip unless she partnered with a compatriot. Lenglen and her father replied by paying for the trip themselves. After Wimbledon, Lenglen won both of her events in Belgium in the lead-up to the Olympic Games in Antwerp. At the Olympics, Lenglen won two gold medals and one bronze medal for France. She won the singles title over British player Dorothy Holman, losing only four games in the entire event. She won mixed doubles with Decugis, overcoming an opening set loss in their quarterfinal. Lenglen partnered with d'Ayen again in the doubles event, losing their semifinal to Kathleen McKane and Winifred McNair in a tight match that ended 8–6 in the decisive third set. This match was Lenglen's only loss in doubles all year. Their opponents in the bronze medal match defaulted.
### 1921: Only singles defeat post-World War I
Lenglen again dominated the tournaments on the Riviera in 1921, winning eight titles in singles, six in doubles, and seven in mixed doubles. Her only loss came in mixed doubles. She won all of her matches against Ryan, four in singles and five in mixed doubles. All of Lenglen's doubles titles on the Riviera were with Ryan.
Lenglen defended her triple crown at the French Championships. Later that month, she returned to the World Hard Court Championships, where five-time United States national singles champion Molla Mallory was making her debut. The United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) sent Mallory and Bill Tilden to the tournament with the hope of drawing Lenglen over to compete in the United States. Although Lenglen defeated Mallory in the final in straight sets, she trailed 2–3 in the second set before winning the last four games. Lenglen won the triple crown at the tournament, partnering with Golding in doubles and Jacques Brugnon in mixed doubles. She then won her third consecutive Wimbledon titles in both singles and doubles, defeating her doubles partner Ryan in a lopsided singles final. She withdrew from the mixed doubles event after her partner suffered an ankle injury.
Lenglen planned to compete at the U.S. National Championships in August to prove she deserved to be called a world champion. Due to illness delaying her trip, however, she did not make it to New York until three days before her opening match and was still sick when she arrived. After Lenglen's opening round opponent defaulted, the tournament rescheduled her second round match against Mallory for that night to appease the large crowd that showed up to see Lenglen play. With more than 8,000 people in attendance, Mallory took a 2–0 lead in the first set before Lenglen began coughing in the third game. After losing the first set, Lenglen retired from the match two points into the second set for her only singles loss after World War I. She played only two more matches in the United States, both small exhibitions, before leaving in late September.
### 1922: Start of 179-match win streak
During the 1922 season, Lenglen did not lose a match in any discipline other than by default. She did not return to competitive tennis until March, six months after her loss to Mallory. Lenglen's first tournament back was the South of France Championships, where she won the doubles and mixed doubles titles. She did not play the singles event and did not play singles again until a month later at the Beausoleil Championships in Monte Carlo, where she won the title without dropping a game. This tournament began a 179-match win streak that Lenglen continued through the end of her amateur career.
In the middle of the year, Lenglen won triple crowns at the World Hard Court Championships, the French Championships, and Wimbledon. At the first, she saved two set points in her semifinal against McKane before winning the set 10–8. Needing to play only three challenge round matches at the French, Lenglen agreed to forgo the challenge round system at Wimbledon and be included in the main draw at the request of the tournament organisers. In the singles final, she faced Mallory in a rematch of their U.S. National Championship meeting. Like in the United States, Mallory won the first two games of the final. However, Lenglen rebounded and won the next twelve games for the title. The final remains the shortest in Wimbledon history, lasting only 26 minutes.
### 1923: Career-best 45 titles
Lenglen entered more events and won more titles in 1923 than any other year. She won all 16 of the singles events she entered, as well as 13 of 14 doubles events, and 16 of 18 mixed doubles events. Unlike previous years, she did not default a match in any discipline. At the beginning of the season, Mallory travelled to France to make her debut on the French Riviera circuit. Lenglen and Mallory had their last encounter at the South of France Championships, which Mallory entered after not performing well at her other two events on the Riviera. Lenglen defeated her without losing a game. At the same tournament, Lenglen's twelve-month win streak across all disciplines came to an end with a mixed doubles loss to Ryan and Lycett.
At what was to be the last edition of the World Hard Court Championships, Lenglen faced McKane in the final in each event, all three of which were held in the same afternoon. She defeated McKane in singles and mixed doubles, the latter of which was with Henri Cochet as her partner for the second consecutive year. With Ryan absent, however, Lenglen partnered with Golding and lost to the British team of McKane and Geraldine Beamish. At the French Championships, Lenglen defended her triple crown without losing a set in spite of the challenge round format being abandoned. She partnered with Brugnon in mixed doubles for the third straight year, and paired with Julie Vlasto for the first time in doubles. She faced the most adversity in the singles final when the crowd uncharacteristically booed her for trailing 0–4 to Golding in the second set. At Wimbledon, Lenglen won the singles and doubles titles with ease, never dropping more than three games in a set. In mixed doubles, however, she was defeated by Ryan and Lycett for the second time in the year. In September, Lenglen travelled outside of France and won titles in Belgium, Spain, and Portugal.
### 1924: No major titles
Although Lenglen did not lose a match in any discipline in 1924 except by default, she did not win a major tournament for the first time since 1913 aside from her hiatus due to World War I. Minor illnesses limited her to three singles events on the Riviera. Lenglen played doubles more regularly, winning eight titles in both doubles and mixed doubles. In April, Lenglen travelled to Spain to compete at the Barcelona International. Although she won all three events, she contracted jaundice soon after, preventing her from playing the French Championships. Although she had not fully recovered by Wimbledon, she entered the tournament and won her first three singles matches without dropping a game. In the next round, however, Ryan proved to be a more difficult opponent and took the second set from Lenglen 8–6, only the third set of singles Lenglen had lost since World War I. Although Lenglen narrowly won the match, she then withdrew from the tournament following the advice of her doctor. She did not play another event the rest of the year, and in particular missed the Olympic Games in Paris, where Helen Wills won the women's singles event.
### 1925: Open French champion
Lenglen returned to tennis at the Beau Site New Year Meeting in Cannes the first week of the year, winning in doubles with Ryan in her only event. She played singles at only two tournaments on the Riviera, including the South of France Championships. Her only loss during this part of the season was to Ryan and Umberto de Morpurgo at the Côte d'Azur Championships in Cannes. In May, Lenglen entered the French Championships, the inaugural edition open to international players. The tournament was played at St. Cloud at the site of the defunct World Hard Court Championships. Lenglen won the triple crown and was not challenged in singles or mixed doubles. She won the singles final over McKane, losing only three games. She won the mixed doubles final with Brugnon against her doubles partner Julie Vlasto and Cochet. Although Lenglen and Vlasto lost the second set of the doubles final 9–11 to McKane and Evelyn Colyer, they won the other two sets with ease for the title.
Lenglen followed her performance at the French Championships with another triple crown at Wimbledon. She played five singles matches and did not lose a game in the second set of any of them. The five games she dropped in total remain a record for fewest games lost in a singles title run in Wimbledon history. Her opponents included Ryan in her opening match, the defending champion McKane in the semifinals, and Joan Fry in the final. In mixed doubles, she partnered with Jean Borotra to defeat Ryan and de Morpurgo in the final. In doubles, Lenglen and Ryan played their last tournament together and won the title without dropping a set. During the last part of the year, Lenglen led France to a 7–4 victory in a tie against Australia, and defeated Australasian champion Daphne Akhurst in the final of the concurrent Deauville tournament. Later in the year, Lenglen won the doubles and mixed doubles events at the Cromer Covered Courts, the only time she played in England other than Wimbledon and her only indoor wood tournament.
### 1926: Match of the Century
The 1926 season unexpectedly was Lenglen's last as an amateur. At the beginning of the season, three-time reigning U.S. national champion Helen Wills travelled to the French Riviera with the hope of playing a match against Lenglen. With Wills's level of stardom approaching that of Lenglen's, there was an immense amount of hype for a match between them to take place. They entered the same singles draw only once, at the Carlton Club in Cannes. When Lenglen and Wills both made the final with little opposition, the club doubled the number of seats around their main court and all three thousand seats plus standing room sold out. Spectators unable to get into the venue attempted to watch the match by climbing trees and ladders or by purchasing unofficial tickets for the windows and roofs of villas across the street. In what was called the Match of the Century, Lenglen defeated Wills in straight sets. The first match point became chaotic when a winner from Wills was called out by a spectator, leading everyone but the officials to believe the match was over. Photographers captured the moment as the players shook hands at the net and the crowd began flooding the court. After clarification that the shot had been in, Wills broke Lenglen to level the set. Despite Lenglen's winning, her reputation of being unbeatable was damaged by Wills's competitive performance.
While Wills remained in France, Lenglen avoided a rematch on the Riviera. After Wills's season was marred by an appendectomy during the French Championships, she withdrew from both Grand Slam tournaments in Europe and another match between her and Lenglen never took place. In Wills's absence, Lenglen defended all three of her titles at the French Championships with ease, defeating Mary Browne in the singles final. She again won the doubles with Vlasto and the mixed doubles with Brugnon.
#### Wimbledon misunderstanding
Although Lenglen was a heavy favourite at Wimbledon with Wills not participating, she began the tournament facing two issues. She was concerned with her family's finances as her father's health was worsening, and she was not content with the FFLT wanting her to enter the doubles event with a French partner instead of her usual partner Ryan. Although Lenglen agreed to play with Vlasto as the FFLT wanted, she was unsettled by being drawn against Ryan in her opening doubles match.
Lenglen's situation did not improve once the tournament began. She opened the singles event with an uncharacteristic win against Browne in which she lost five games, the same number she had lost in the entire 1925 singles event. Her next singles match was then moved before her doubles match to accommodate the royal family, who planned to be in attendance. Wanting to play doubles first, Lenglen asked for the match to be rescheduled. Although the request was never received, she arrived at the grounds late. After Wimbledon officials confronted her in anger over keeping Queen Mary waiting, she refused to play. The club ultimately adhered to Lenglen's wishes and rescheduled both matches with the doubles first. Nonetheless, Lenglen and Vlasto were defeated by Ryan and Browne in three sets while the crowd who typically supported Lenglen turned against her. Although she defeated Evelyn Dewhurst in the rescheduled singles match, she then withdrew from both singles and mixed doubles, ending her last amateur tournament.
## Professional career
### United States tour (1926–27)
A month after her withdrawal from Wimbledon, Lenglen signed a \$50,000 contract (equivalent to about \$ in 2020) with American sports promoter C. C. Pyle to headline a four-month professional tour in the United States beginning in October 1926. She had begun discussing a professional contract with Pyle's associate William Pickens when he visited her on the Riviera in April. Lenglen had previously turned down an offer of 200,000 francs (equivalent to about \$ in 2020) to turn professional in the United States following her last victory over Molla Mallory in 1923, declining in large part to keep her amateur status. She became less concerned with that, however, after the crowd turned against her at Wimbledon. She was more interested in keeping her social status, and was convinced by Pyle that turning professional would not hurt her stardom or damage her reputation. With Lenglen on the tour, Pyle attempted to recruit other top players, including Wills, McKane, and leading Americans Bill Tilden and Bill Johnston. Although they all declined, Pyle was able to sign Mary Browne as well as men's players Vincent Richards, Paul Féret, Howard Kinsey, and Harvey Snodgrass. Richards was regarded as the biggest star among the male players, having won gold medals in singles and doubles at the 1924 Olympics. Once the tour began, Lenglen and all of the other players lost their amateur status.
Although professional tennis tournaments already existed, the tour was the first travelling professional exhibition series in tennis history. It featured 40 stops, starting on 9 October 1926 and ending on 14 February 1927, and included several stops in Canada as well as one in Cuba. Lenglen dominated Browne on the tour, winning all 33 of the best-of-three-set matches played to completion. Browne did not win a set until the second set at the 33rd stop. The only other set she won was the only set they played at the 36th stop, where Lenglen had decided to play just a one-set match while ill to avoid disappointing the fans. Browne also nearly won a set at the 23rd stop, losing 9–11, at which point Lenglen decided not to continue.
The tour was a financial success. Lenglen earned the most money, receiving half of the revenue from ticket sales and \$100,000 in total, more than the \$70,000 that Babe Ruth earned in 1927 as the highest-paid player in Major League Baseball. The average attendance was just over four thousand at the 34 venues where it was recorded. The most well-attended venues were opening night at Madison Square Garden in New York City with an attendance of thirteen thousand and the Public Auditorium in Cleveland with an attendance of ten thousand. Opening night in particular brought in \$34,000 from tickets sold at \$1.50 to \$5.50 (equivalent to \$ to \$ in 2020).
### British tour (1927)
A few months after the end of the United States tour, Lenglen signed with British promoter Charles Cochran to headline a shorter professional tour in the United Kingdom. Cochran recruited Dora Köring, the 1912 Olympic silver medalist in singles, and Dewhurst to play against Lenglen. Karel Koželuh and Kinsey were the male players on the tour. There were seven tour stops, all in July 1927. Lenglen won all seven of her singles matches, never losing more than five games in any of them. The last three stops were played on the grounds of association football clubs: Queen's Park in Glasgow, Blackpool, and Manchester United. These were the best attended events on the tour and the final match at Old Trafford had an attendance of over fifteen thousand, the highest between either professional tour.
### Aftermath
Lenglen was widely criticised for her decision to turn professional. Once the tour began, the FFLT expelled her and Féret while the All England Lawn Tennis Club revoked her membership. Lenglen in turn criticised amateur tennis for her nearing poverty. In the program for the United States professional tour, she stated, "In the twelve years I have been champion I have earned literally millions of francs for tennis ... And in my whole lifetime I have not earned \$5,000 – not one cent of that by my specialty, my life study – tennis ... I am twenty-seven and not wealthy – should I embark on any other career and leave the one for which I have what people call genius? Or should I smile at the prospect of actual poverty and continue to earn a fortune – for whom?" She criticised the barriers that typically prevented ordinary people from becoming tennis players, stating, "Under these absurd and antiquated amateur rulings, only a wealthy person can compete, and the fact of the matter is that only wealthy people do compete. Is that fair? Does it advance the sport?" Lenglen did not participate in any other professional tours after 1927. She never formally applied to be reinstated as an amateur with the FFLT either. She had asked about the possibility in 1932 after Féret was reinstated, but was told to wait another three years and decided against it.
## Rivalries
### Lenglen vs. Mallory
Molla Mallory was the only player to defeat Lenglen in singles after World War I. Fifteen years older than Lenglen and originally from Norway, Mallory won a bronze medal at the 1912 Olympic Games before emigrating to the United States in 1914. While World War I halted tennis in Europe, Mallory established herself as the top-ranked American player, winning the first four U.S. National Championships she entered from 1915 through 1918. Whereas Lenglen regularly came to the net and had an all-court game built around control rather than power, the much older Mallory played almost exclusively from the baseline. The strengths of Mallory's game were that she took the ball early and had one of the most powerful forehands in women's tennis at the time. Mallory had a similar personality to Lenglen off the court. While they each hated losing, both of them smoked regularly and loved to dance. Lenglen faced Mallory just four times in singles, compiling a 3–1 record. She also won both of their doubles and mixed doubles encounters.
Their first two meetings were highlighted by Lenglen's health issues. In the final of the 1921 World Hard Court Championships, Lenglen nearly retired while struggling with blisters on her foot and trailing in the second set. Nonetheless, Lenglen proceeded to win by following her plan to play defensively and wait for Mallory to make unforced errors on attempted winners. In their second meeting at the 1921 U.S. National Championships, Mallory was able to take advantage of Lenglen's poor health, executing her usual strategy of going for winners to win the match. Although they had entered the doubles event as partners, Lenglen's health prevented them from playing any matches together at the tournament. Lenglen was able to easily win their last two meetings in 1922 and 1923 by playing more aggressively and employing Mallory's strategy of hitting well-placed winners from the baseline.
The press built the rivalry between Lenglen and Mallory. After Lenglen's retirement against Mallory at the U.S. National Championships, the vast majority of American newspapers criticised Lenglen for not finishing the match and accused her of retiring because she did not think she could win. They coined a phrase "cough and quit" that became popular at the time for describing someone who needed an excuse to avoid losing. After Lenglen's victory over Mallory at Wimbledon, the American press returned to supporting Lenglen. Both Lenglen and Mallory believed the newspapers exaggerated the personal nature of their rivalry. Mallory in particular said, "The newspapers are the dirtiest, filthiest things that ever happened. I don't want my name in the newspapers. I have a better chance on the courts than in the newspapers of my own country."
### Lenglen and Ryan
Lenglen's usual doubles partner Elizabeth Ryan was also her most frequent opponent in singles. Born in the United States, Ryan travelled to England in 1912 to visit her sister before deciding to stay there permanently. Although she lost all four of her appearances in major finals, Ryan won 26 major titles between doubles and mixed doubles. The biggest strength of her game was volleying. Tennis writer Ted Tinling said, "volleying as a fundamental, aggressive technique was first injected into the women's game by Ryan." Lenglen and Ryan first partnered together at a handicap event in Monte Carlo in 1913 when they were 13 and 20 years old respectively. After losing the final at that tournament, the two of them never lost a regular doubles match, only once dropping a set in 1923 to Dorothea Lambert Chambers and Kathleen McKane, again at Monte Carlo. Ryan was Lenglen's doubles partner for 40 of her 74 doubles titles, including all six at Wimbledon and two of three at the World Hard Court Championships.
Ryan defeated Lenglen in their first singles meeting in straight sets at Monte Carlo in 1914 and also won a set in their second meeting two months later. Following their first encounter, Lenglen won all 17 of their remaining matches, including five at Wimbledon and two major finals. The only time Ryan won a set against Lenglen after World War I was in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon in 1924, where Lenglen withdrew due to illness in the following round. When the FFLT asked Lenglen to take a French partner in doubles at Wimbledon in 1926, Ryan partnered with Mary Browne to defeat Lenglen and her new partner Julie Vlasto, coming from three match points down in the second set. Ryan also won their only other doubles meeting in 1914. In mixed doubles, Lenglen compiled a 23–9 record against Ryan. Half of her career mixed doubles losses were to Ryan. After losing their first six encounters, she recovered to win the next thirteen. Lenglen won her first mixed doubles match against Ryan at the 1920 Beaulieu tournament, starting a win streak that ended with a loss to Ryan and Lycett at the 1923 South of France Championships.
### Overlap with Wills
Helen Wills was the closest to becoming Lenglen's counterpart. Wills finished her career with 19 Grand Slam singles titles, a record that stood until 1970. She succeeded Lenglen as world No. 1 in 1927 and kept that ranking for the next six years and nine of the next twelve overall until 1938. Late in Lenglen's amateur career, Wills had built a similar level of stardom to Lenglen by winning the 1924 Olympic gold medal in singles in Lenglen's absence while still only 18 years old. Although their careers overlapped when Wills visited Europe in 1924 and 1926, Lenglen faced Wills only once in her career. Lenglen withdrew from Wimbledon and the Olympics due to jaundice in 1924, and Wills withdrew from the French Championships and Wimbledon in 1926 due to appendicitis, preventing a longer rivalry between tennis's two biggest female stars of the 1920s from emerging.
## Playing style
Describing Lenglen's all-court style of play, Elizabeth Ryan said: "[Lenglen] owned every kind of shot, plus a genius for knowing how and when to use them. She never gave an opponent the same kind of shot twice in a row. She'd make you run miles ... her game was all placement and deception and steadiness. I had the best drop shot anybody ever had, but she could not only get up to it but was so fast that often she could score a placement off it." Her rivals Molla Mallory and Helen Wills both noted that Lenglen excelled at extending rallies and could take control of points with defensive shots. Although Lenglen built her game around control rather than power, she had the ability to hit powerful shots. In particular, Mallory praised the power behind her defensive shots, saying, "She is just the steadiest player that ever was. She just sent back at me whatever I sent at her and waited for me to make a fault. And her returns often enough were harder than the shots I sent up to her." British journalist A. E. Crawley regarded her as having the best movement of her time, saying, "I have never seen on a lawn tennis court either man or woman move with such mechanical and artistic perfection and poise. Whether [Lenglen's] objective is the ball or merely changing sides, she reminded you of the movement of fire over prairie grass." He believed she was a powerful server and an aggressive volleyer, commenting, "She serves with all the male athlete's power. She smashes with the same loose and rapid action, the release of a spring of steel. Her volley is not a timid push, but an arrow from the bow. And an arrow from the bow is Suzanne herself."
Adopting a style of play drawn from men's players led Lenglen to become one of the leading volleyers in women's tennis at a time when the women's game was centred around playing from the baseline, even for the top players. Lenglen aimed to come to the net to finish points quickly whenever possible. Kathleen McKane specifically noted that "Suzanne volleyed like a man" when describing her influence on women's tennis. While Lenglen did not model the majority of her game after any specific player, she modelled her forehand after that of Anthony Wilding. Like Wilding, she aimed to hit forehands flat and with little to no topspin. She used a continental grip and strived to hit balls early on the rise. Lenglen wrote in her book Lawn Tennis for Girls: "A favorite shot of mine is the backhand down the line". Lenglen was regarded as having a graceful style of play. Her movement was thought to resemble that of a dancer, a style that may have arisen from a course on classic Greek dance she had taken as a child. René Lacoste, a leading French men's tennis player from her era, said, "[Lenglen] played with marvelous ease the simplest strokes in the world. It was only after several games that I understood what harmony was concealed by her simplicity, what wonderful mental and physical balance was hidden by the facility of her play."
Lenglen developed a reputation for drinking cognac to help her play at pivotal points of her biggest matches. Most notably, she did so during the second and third sets of her victory against Lambert Chambers in the 1919 Wimbledon final, and at the start and during the more competitive second set of her victory over Helen Wills in the Match of the Century. She travelled to the U.S. National Championships in 1921 only after the USLTA agreed to supply her with alcohol during her stay even though its sale was illegal under the laws of Prohibition at the time. Nonetheless, they did not provide Lenglen with alcohol during her retirement loss to Mallory.
## Legacy
### Achievements
Lenglen was ranked as the 24th greatest player in history in the 100 Greatest of All Time television series. She was the ninth-highest ranked woman overall, and the highest-ranked woman to play exclusively in the amateur era. After formal annual women's tennis rankings began to be published by tennis journalist and player A. Wallis Myers in 1921, Lenglen was No. 1 in the world in each of the first six editions of the rankings through her retirement from amateur tennis in 1926. She won a total of 250 titles consisting of 83 in singles, 74 in doubles, and 93 in mixed doubles. Nine of her singles titles were won without losing a game. Lenglen compiled win percentages of 97.9% in singles and 96.9% across all disciplines. After World War I, she won 287 of 288 singles matches, starting with a 108-match win streak and ending with a 179-match win streak, the latter of which was longer than Helen Wills's longest win streak of 161 matches. Lenglen ended her career on a 250-match win streak on clay.
Lenglen's eight Grand Slam women's singles titles are tied for the tenth-most all-time, and tied for fourth in the amateur era behind only Maureen Connolly's nine, Court's thirteen, and Wills's nineteen. Aside from the 1919 Wimbledon Championships, Lenglen did not lose more than three games in a set in any of her other Grand Slam or World Hard Court Championship singles finals. Lenglen's six Wimbledon titles are tied for the sixth-most in history. Her former record of five consecutive Wimbledon titles has since been matched only by Martina Navratilova, who won her sixth in a row in 1987. Lenglen's title at the 1914 World Hard Court Championships made her the youngest major champion in tennis history at 15 years and 16 days old, nearly a year ahead of the next two youngest, Martina Hingis and Lottie Dod.
Lenglen won a total of 17 titles at Wimbledon, 19 at the French Championships, and 10 at the World Hard Court Championships across all disciplines. Lenglen completed three Wimbledon triple crowns – winning the singles, doubles, and mixed doubles events at a tournament in the same year – in 1920, 1922, and 1925. She also won two triple crowns at the World Hard Court Championships in 1921 and 1922, and six at the French Championships, the first four of which came consecutively from 1920 through 1923 when the tournament was invitation-only to French nationals and the last two of which came in 1925 and 1926 when the tournament was open to internationals.
### Mythical persona
Following World War I, Lenglen became a symbol of national pride in France in a country looking to recover from the war. The French press referred to Lenglen as notre Suzanne (our Suzanne) to characterise her status as a national heroine; and more eminently as La Divine (The Goddess) to assert her unassailability. The press wrote about Lenglen as if she were infallible at tennis, often attributing any performance that was relatively poor by her standards to various excuses such as the fault of her doubles partner or to having concern over the health of her father. Journalists who criticised Lenglen were condemned and refuted by the rest of the press. At the Olympics, she introduced herself to journalists as "The Great Lenglen", a title that was well received. Before matches, Lenglen would predict to the press that she was going to win, a practice that Americans treated as improper. She explained, "When I am asked a question I endeavour to give a frank answer. If I know I am going to win, what harm is there in saying so?"
Lenglen was the first female athlete to be acknowledged as a celebrity outside of her sport. She was acquainted with members of royal families such as King Gustav V of Sweden, and actresses such as Mary Pickford. She was well known by the general public, and her matches were well-attended by people not otherwise interested in tennis. Many of her biggest matches were sold out, including the 1919 Wimbledon final against Lambert Chambers, where the attendance more than doubled the seating capacity of Centre Court, and her first match against Mallory, where tickets were sold at a cost of up to 500 francs (about \$ in 2020) and an estimated five thousand people could not gain entry to see the match after it had sold out. The popularity of Lenglen's matches at Wimbledon was a large factor in the club moving the tournament from Worple Road to its modern site at Church Road. A new Centre Court opened in 1922 with a seating capacity of nearly ten thousand, nearly three times larger than that at the old venue. At the Match of the Century against Wills, seated tickets that were sold out at 300 francs, then equivalent to about \$11 in the United States (or \$ in 2020), were re-sold by scalpers at up to 1200 francs, which was then about \$44 (or \$ in 2020). This cost far exceeded that for the men's singles final at the U.S. National Championships at the time, which were sold at as low as \$2 per seat (about \$ in 2020).
Lenglen's mythical reputation began at a young age. She was known for a story about her father training her to improve her shot precision as a child by placing a handkerchief at different locations on the court and instructing her to hit it as a target. She was said to be able to hit the handkerchief with ease regardless of the type of incoming shot. Each time she did, he would fold it in half before replacing it with a coin. It was said that Lenglen could hit the coin up to five times in a row.
### Professional tennis
Lenglen was the first leading tennis player to leave amateur tennis to play professionally, thereby launching playing tennis as a professional career. The exhibition tour she headlined in the United States from 1926 to 1927 in which a few players travelled together to compete against each other across a series of venues was the first of its kind. It established a format that was repeated over twenty times for the next four decades until the start of the Open Era. With Pyle interested in tennis only because of Lenglen, Vincent Richards, the leading male player on Lenglen's United States tour, organised the next such tour featuring himself competing against Karel Koželuh in 1928. He also began organising the first major professional tournaments to feature players who had been top amateurs, beginning with the U.S. Pro Tennis Championships first held later in 1927.
As the top women's players nearly all kept their amateur status, women were largely left out of both the travelling exhibition tours and the growing professional tournaments after Lenglen's playing career ended. The next significant exhibition tour to feature women's tennis players did not occur until 1941 when Alice Marble became one of the headliners on a tour that also featured leading male players Don Budge and Bill Tilden. Fellow top-ranked players Pauline Betz and Althea Gibson followed Marble by turning professional in 1947 and 1958 respectively. Betz played on two tours, one in 1947 and another from 1950 to 1951. Gibson played in a series of warmup matches for the Harlem Globetrotters, an exhibition basketball team in the United States.
### Women's sportswear
Lenglen redefined traditional women's tennis attire early in her career. By the 1919 Wimbledon final, she avoided donning a corset in favour of a short-sleeved blouse and calf-length pleated skirt to go along with a distinctive circular-brimmed bonnet, a stark contrast with her much older opponent Dorothea Lambert Chambers who wore long sleeves and a plain skirt below the calf.
The following year, Lenglen ended the norm of women competing in clothes not suited for playing tennis. She had Jean Patou design her outfits that were not only intended to be stylish, but allowed her to perform her signature leaping ballet motion in points and did not restrict her movement on the court. This type of attire was among the earliest women's sportswear. Unusual for the time, her blouse was sleeveless and her skirt extended only to her knees. Lenglen replaced the bonnet with a bandeau, which became known as the "Lenglen bandeau" and was her signature piece of attire throughout the rest of her career. On the court, she routinely wore makeup and popularised having tanned skin instead of a pale complexion that other players had preferred before her time. Later in her career, she moved away from just wearing white in favour of brighter-coloured outfits. Overall, she pioneered the idea of players using the tennis court to showcase fashion instead of just competing. Off the court, Lenglen frequently wore an oversized and expensive fur coat.
### Honours
Lenglen is honoured in a variety of ways at the French Open. At Stade Roland Garros, Court Suzanne Lenglen – the second show court that was built in 1994 with a capacity of about ten thousand – was named after her in 1997. Outside the court, there is a bronze relief statue of Lenglen that was erected in 1994. The FFLT had originally planned to erect a statue of Lenglen immediately after her death, but this plan never materialised due to the start of World War II later that year. Additionally, one of the main entrances to the ground is Porte Suzanne Lenglen, which leads to Allée Suzanne Lenglen. Moreover, the women's singles championship trophy was named the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen in 1987. In spite of her success at the French Championships, Lenglen never competed at Stade Roland Garros as it did not become the site for the tournament until 1928, after her retirement from amateur tennis.
Lenglen was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1978. Following her death, she was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honour. Another road, the Avenue Suzanne Lenglen, is named in her honour outside of the Nice Lawn Tennis Club. She has been honoured in a Google Doodle twice, once on her 117th birthday on 24 May 2016, and again on International Women's Day on 8 March 2017.
## Personal life
Lenglen was in a long-term relationship with Baldwin Baldwin from 1927 to 1932. Baldwin was the grandson and heir to Lucky Baldwin, a prominent businessman and real estate investor active in California. Lenglen met Baldwin during her professional tour in the United States. Although they intended to get married, those plans never materialised largely because Baldwin was already married and his wife would not agree to a divorce while Lenglen and Baldwin were together. During this time, her father died of poor health in 1929.
Lenglen was the author of several books on tennis, the first two of which she wrote during her amateur career. Her first book, Lawn Tennis for Girls, covered techniques and advice on tactics for beginner tennis players. She also wrote Lawn Tennis: The Game of Nations and a romantic novel, The Love Game: Being the Life Story of Marcelle Penrose. Lenglen finished her last book Tennis by Simple Exercises with Margaret Morris in 1937. The book featured a section by Lenglen on what was needed to become an all-around tennis player and a section by Morris, a choreographer and dancer, on exercises designed for tennis players. She played a role as an actress in the 1935 British musical comedy film Things Are Looking Up, in which she contests a tennis match against the lead character portrayed by Cicely Courtneidge.
Following her playing career, Lenglen returned to tennis as a coach in 1933, serving as the director of a school on the grounds of Stade Roland Garros. She opened her own tennis school for girls in 1936 at the Tennis Mirabeau in Paris with the support of the FFLT. She began instructing adults the following year as well. A year later in May 1938, Lenglen became the inaugural director of the French National Tennis School in Paris. Shortly after this appointment, however, Lenglen became severely fatigued while teaching at the school and needed to receive a blood transfusion. She previously had other health issues following her retirement, most notably suffering from appendicitis and having an appendectomy in October 1934. Lenglen died on 4 July 1938 at the age of 39, three weeks after she became ill, and was reported to have died from pernicious anemia. Her specific cause of death was unclear owing to anemia being curable, and to reports of her having other illnesses, including leukemia. Lenglen was buried at the Cimetière de Saint-Ouen just outside Paris.
## Career statistics
### Performance timelines
Results from the French Championships before 1924 do not count towards the statistical totals because the tournament was not yet open to international players.
#### Singles
#### Doubles
#### Mixed doubles
Source:
### Major finals
#### Grand Slam singles: 8 (8 titles)
#### World Championship singles: 4 (4 titles)
Source:
### Olympic medal matches
#### Singles: 1 (1 gold medal)
Source:
## See also
- List of Grand Slam women's singles champions
- List of Grand Slam women's doubles champions
- List of Grand Slam mixed doubles champions
- List of Grand Slam-related tennis records
|
58,698,945 |
Hurricane Leslie (2018)
| 1,171,955,658 |
Category 1 Atlantic hurricane in 2018
|
[
"2018 Atlantic hurricane season",
"2018 in Portugal",
"Category 1 Atlantic hurricanes",
"European windstorms",
"Hurricanes in Europe",
"Hurricanes in the Azores",
"October 2018 events in Europe",
"October 2018 events in Spain",
"Tropical cyclones in 2018"
] |
Hurricane Leslie (known as Storm Leslie or Cyclone Leslie), while extratropical, was the strongest cyclone of tropical origin to strike the Iberian Peninsula since 1842. A large, long-lived, and very erratic tropical cyclone, Leslie was the twelfth named storm and sixth hurricane of the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season. The storm had a non-tropical origin, developing from an extratropical cyclone that was situated over the northern Atlantic on 22 September. The low quickly acquired subtropical characteristics and was classified as Subtropical Storm Leslie on the following day. The cyclone meandered over the northern Atlantic and gradually weakened, before merging with a frontal system on 25 September, which later intensified into a powerful hurricane-force extratropical low over the northern Atlantic.
While Leslie began to weaken late on 27 September, the low began to re-acquire subtropical characteristics, and by 28 September, Leslie had completed the transition to a subtropical storm once again. Leslie became fully tropical and gradually intensified, becoming a Category 1 hurricane early on 3 October, and initially peaked with 1-minute sustained winds of 140 km/h (85 mph) later that day. Leslie gradually weakened, falling to tropical storm intensity late on 4 October. The cyclone continued to slowly weaken before beginning to re-intensify on 8 October. Two days later, Leslie reached hurricane status for the second time. Leslie continued to slowly strengthen, reaching peak intensity with sustained winds of 150 km/h (90 mph) and a minimum central pressure of 968 mbar (28.59 inHg), early on 12 October. Leslie then began to gradually weaken later that day, while accelerating towards the northeast and passed far south of the Azores. On 13 October, Leslie passed north of Madeira, before transitioning into an extratropical cyclone just off the Portuguese coast later that day. Leslie's remnants made landfall in central Portugal a few hours later. The low continued moving northeastward while rapidly weakening, passing over the Bay of Biscay, before dissipating by 16 October over Spain.
The storm was responsible for 17 deaths in mainland Europe, including 2 direct deaths in Portugal and 15 indirect deaths in France. In November 2018, Aon estimated that Leslie's damage total exceeded €424 million (US\$500 million). Hurricane Leslie prompted the issuance of tropical storm watches and warnings for Madeira Island. Leslie brought wind gusts up to 190 km/h (120 mph) to Portugal, felling thousands of trees, causing the collapse of hundreds of structures, and damaging hundreds of buildings, signs, and pieces of equipment. Over 300,000 citizens were left without power. Damage across the country was estimated to be €120 million (US\$145 million). City, municipal, and the national government provided funds to repair damage to buildings as well as the local forests, and also launch cleanup efforts. Leslie brought strong winds and torrential rainfall to Spain, most notably the Catalonia region, causing a river to spill its banks, nearly four dozen landslides to occur, and damaging several structures and vehicles. The storm disrupted transportation and caused 14,000 power outages throughout the country. Leslie and a cold front, the latter of which was almost stationary, combined to cause record-breaking flooding in the Aude, France. The flooding in the department was considered to be the worst since 1891. Floodwaters damaged buildings, roads, and vehicles throughout several towns and cities, causing €220 million (US\$254 million) in damage. Nearly 1,000 people were evacuated when a dam overflowed in Pezens Municipality, and over 8,000 people lost power nationwide.
## Meteorological history
### Origins, formation, and tropical transition
The United States-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) began forecasting on 19 September 2018 that an extratropical low would form in a few days between the Azores and Bermuda. This system developed along the boundary of a front early on 22 September, approximately 1,295 km (805 mi) west-southwest of Flores Island. This system was associated with the southern portion of the remnants of Hurricane Florence, which had previously split into two storms on 18 September. Amid favorable environmental conditions, the system separated from the front, and its banding features became better established, signaling the formation of Subtropical Storm Leslie by 12:00 UTC on 23 September. Around that time, Leslie was within an upper-level low and the former's gale-force winds were displaced from the center. The subtropical cyclone was located within an area of minimal steering currents, causing the storm's movement to be erratic. Moderate vertical wind shear and dry air hindered the development of thunderstorm activity or convection outside the southeastern portion of the system, as it tracked generally southwestward. The cyclone turned towards the south and later the east on 24 September. During that time, Leslie's cloud pattern became irregular, with several cloud swirls existing within a broadening circulation. Leslie weakened into a subtropical depression around 00:00 UTC on 25 September, due to the continuing wind shear and dry air. The storm began a southeastward motion later in the day, followed by a turn back to the east. Leslie became an extratropical cyclone around 12:00 UTC, after its circulation expanded along a baroclinic zone. At that time, an expansive stratocumulus cloud shield was becoming established and cold, stable air was entering the region.
During the next couple of days, Leslie's track consisted of an incomplete counterclockwise loop. At the same time, the baroclinic processes strengthened the extratropical cyclone, leading to hurricane-force winds of 120 km/h (75 mph) by 00:00 UTC on 27 September. A weakening trend commenced during the middle of the day and persisted until 28 September. However, as Leslie tracked westward, it began to reacquire tropical characteristics and was declared a subtropical storm once more around 12:00 UTC. The storm had reestablished bands of convection near its center and its wind field had shrunk considerably. While Leslie had transitioned from a cold core to a warm core system, it was still located within a sizable low-pressure system. Over the next couple of days, the cyclone experienced minimal change in strength as it tracked in a southwesterly direction around the western edge of an extensive cyclonic circulation. Thunderstorm activity developed near Leslie's center and anticyclonic outflow materialized to the northeast and southeast of the system. As a result, Leslie became a tropical storm by 18:00 UTC on 29 September, while it was located approximately 1,850 km (1,150 mi) west-southwest of Flores Island in the Azores.
### Initial peak intensity and weakening
Located within a region of cool sea surface temperatures and strong northwesterly wind shear, the tropical storm intensified little during the next couple of days. Banding features began to increase on 1 October, as the wind shear subsided. Leslie continued a west-southwestward to southwestward motion over the next day or so, while located in weak steering currents and positioned between high-pressure systems that were located to the west and northeast. As Leslie began to strengthen more quickly on 2 October, convection increased both in intensity and organization. Microwave imagery displayed that Leslie had developed an eye at its low levels. The storm intensified into a hurricane around 06:00 UTC on 3 October. Meanwhile, Leslie became stationary, with its southerly movement ending. Leslie reached its initial peak at 18:00 UTC as a Category 1 hurricane, with 1-minute maximum sustained winds of 140 km/h (87 mph). At the time, the storm had a large, irregular eye, with sporadic dry air entrainment. The storm began to track northward between a shortwave trough, which was located to the northeast, and a mid-level ridge, which was located to Leslie's southeast.
Moving over cooler, 26 °C (79 °F) sea surface temperatures, Leslie began to weaken slowly on 4 October. The cyclone weakened to a tropical storm around 18:00 UTC. By 5 October, Leslie's inner core had dissipated, and the storm possessed only small bands of convection on the outer limits of its circulation. Convection refired over the storm's center later that day, although the maximum winds were located 165–185 km (103–115 mi) away. Leslie turned towards the east from late 5 October to 6 October, under the influence of mid-latitude westerly flow. Although the tropical storm traversed a region of even colder, 24–25 °C (75–77 °F) sea surface temperatures during the next couple of days and was located in a region of moderate wind shear, the storm changed little in strength. Leslie's convection became more organized on 6 October, as banding features became more defined and a mid-level eye formed to the southeast of the storm's low-level circulation center. Leslie turned towards the east-southeast on 7 October, still under the influence of the westerly flow. Leslie bottomed out as an 85 km/h (53 mph) tropical storm at 00:00 UTC, as it passed over an area of cool sea surface temperatures.
### Peak intensity, extratropical transition, and demise
Leslie began to restrengthen later on 8 October, as an inner core began to develop and convection became more intense. While the storm continued to track in a southeastward direction, traversing an environment of warmer sea surface temperatures and lower wind shear, a mid-level eye feature began to develop. Turning towards the south, Leslie restrengthened into a hurricane around 06:00 UTC on 10 October. Around that time, the storm's strongest convection was concentrated towards the north, and an irregular eye had emerged on satellite imagery. The cyclone began to proceed east-northeastward early on 11 October, as strengthening continued. Leslie peaked at 00:00 UTC on 12 October as a Category 1 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 150 km/h (93 mph) and a minimum central pressure of 968 mbar (28.6 inHg), while located approximately 1,065 km (662 mi) south-southwest of Flores Island. The storm had a small, cloud-filled eye around that time.
Leslie began to slowly weaken once more later that day, as sea surface temperatures decreased to 23–24 °C (73–75 °F) and wind shear increased. The mid-latitude westerly flow began to rapidly accelerate Leslie towards the east-northeast, with the cyclone passing 325 km (202 mi) north-northwest of Madeira Island around 06:00 UTC on 13 October. Shortly after, Leslie began to transition into an extratropical cyclone, as colder air entered from the south and west and the system's mid-level eye decayed. The cyclone's convection continued to disintegrate as a result of even colder 20 °C (68 °F) sea surface temperatures and strong wind shear. The NHC issued its final advisory on Leslie around 21:00 UTC on 13 October, after the storm became fully extratropical. The cyclone moved ashore near Figueira da Foz at 21:00 UTC, with winds of 120 km/h (75 mph). Leslie weakened as it traversed the Bay of Biscay on 14 October, reaching western France by 15 October. An almost stationary, convective cold front over southern France was assisted by Leslie. The latter helped to spawn a surface low over the Mediterranean Sea which increased convection near the cold front, and it provided unstable air parcels, reduced evaporation, and added moisture to the mid-levels of the airmass over France. Leslie's remnant was absorbed into Hurricane Michael's extratropical remnant by 16 October, following a brief Fujiwhara interaction.
## Preparations
A tropical storm watch was issued for Madeira on 11 October, at 21:00 UTC. The watch was upgraded to a warning at 03:00 UTC on 12 October. Over 180 sports games were canceled as Leslie approached. Multiple flights were canceled on 12 October, and all flights were canceled on 13 October. In Funchal, all bathhouses and a park were closed. Sea voyages to Porto Santo were postponed and fishermen were ordered to move ashore by authorities. At least 13 districts in Portugal were placed under a red alert from 13 to 14 October, in anticipation of adverse weather conditions from Leslie. Alerts were also issued by Portugal for Madeira and the Azores. A 1990s-themed party at the Lisbon International Fair was moved back a week as Leslie approached. Fishing vessels were asked to return to port and surfers were ordered to move ashore. Seaside streets were closed between Parede and Carcavelos, as well as river routes in the Tagus between Trafaria, Porto Brandão and Belém were closed on 13 October, as Leslie approached Portugal. Nine ports in Portugal were closed to naval traffic due to the storm. At least 29 flights were canceled in Lisbon and Funchal, and 12 others were canceled in Porto. Several shows and events in Lisbon, including the Lisbon Marathon, were either canceled or postponed.
A yellow alert was declared for 25 provinces in Spain during the storm. An orange alert was issued for the provinces of Barcelona, Castellón, Huesca, Lleida, Navarra, Tarragona, Teruel, Zaragoza, Girona, and the Balearic Islands. In Seville, parks were closed on 13 October as a precaution, due to Leslie's approach. All parks but the Parque de Los Príncipes were reopened the next day, which was closed for repairs.
The Aude, Hérault, Pyrénées-Orientales, Tarn, Haute-Garonne, and Aveyron departments in France were all placed under an orange alert, due to the expectation of strong winds and flooding rainfall from the approaching Leslie.
## Impact
In November 2018, Aon estimated that Leslie's damage total exceeded €424 million (US\$500 million).
### Portugal
As the cyclone reached the Portuguese Coast, it brought wind gusts of 190 km/h (120 mph); Leslie was considered the worst cyclone to affect Portugal since 1842. The strong gusts were attributed to the development of a sting jet. Leslie was only the second tropical cyclone to make landfall on the Iberian Peninsula since 1842, with the other storm being Hurricane Vince, which made landfall in southern Spain during 2005. Buoys at three locations along the coast recorded the height of wind-generated waves. Around 00:00 UTC on 14 October, waves up to 4.22 m (13.8 ft) high were observed offshore Faro. Waves affected Leixões and Sines around 08:00 UTC, with peak wave heights of 8.96 and 8.60 m (29.4 and 28.2 ft) occurring there, respectively.
Across Portugal, at least 441 structures collapsed due to strong winds. Thousands of trees were felled by the storm. A 150-year-old araucaria columnaris, a member of a tree species rare to Portugal, was among the trees felled. Around 39,000 telephone, internet, and television customers lost these services. Nearly 500 employees fixed 150 antennas, which re-established transmission services. The storm left 324,000 customers without power and injured a few dozen people. At least 61 people had to be evacuated from their houses due to damage from the storm; 57 people were from Coimbra, 3 from Viseu, and 1 from Leiria.
The storm caused significant damage to the forest industry in Portugal. At least €12.7 million (US\$15.4 million) in economic losses occurred throughout 3,500 hectares (8,600 acres) of forest. Around 200–250 thousand pine saplings in forests located between Figueira da Foz and Leiria were destroyed, cutting production of resin. Leslie inflicted around €29.8 million (US\$36.2 million) in damage to agriculture across the districts of Leiria, Coimbra, Aveiro, and Viseu. Approximately €10.5 million (US\$12.4 million) in damage to annual crops occurred. Over 1,000 vehicles were damaged across the country. Damage from Leslie in Portugal was estimated to be around €120 million (US\$145 million), with half of the total stemming from 28,000 insurance claims for storm damage.
#### Coimbra District
The storm made landfall near Figueira da Foz, which is located 200 km (120 mi) north of Lisbon. Authorities in Lisbon requested that all residents remain indoors. Around 800 people took refuge in a concert hall in Figueira da Foz. Wind gusts of 176 km/h (109 mph) downed trees and traffic signs, with the former causing several traffic accidents. In the city, six vehicles were damaged by a collapsing building, and another five were damaged by falling trees. Multiple homes in the area were deroofed. Three schools and the Figueira da Foz District Hospital were damaged by the storm. Near the shoreline, a car was pulverized and a restaurant was reduced to rubble. A roof was ripped off a building and blown across an esplanade by strong winds. A high-voltage power pole collapsed in Leirosa, falling on a house; the roof of the house subsequently collapsed. A surf instruction center near Praia da Leirosa was lifted onto another property. Strong winds picked up a trailer and tossed it on top of another. At least 80 trailers were either damaged or destroyed in the park. Hundreds of residences, businesses, and fishing piers sustained damage. Figueira da Foz was considered the worst-hit municipality, with the storm inflicting €38 million (US\$46.2 million) in damage.
At least 3,500 trees were downed near Serra da Boa Viagem alone. The core trees of the forest, which had survived two wildfires in 1993 and 2005 and a major storm in 2013, was largely destroyed. Falling trees smashed concrete picnic tables at a park. The roofs of four bungalows sustained damage, and the balcony cover and glass of another was shattered. The Casa do Parque suffered roof damage; six changing rooms experienced both internal and roof damage, and a dishwashing station was destroyed. Nearly 40 percent of the trees in the Choupal National Forest were either damaged or felled by Leslie.
In Soure, damage was estimated to be at least €1,000,000 (US\$1,208,000), with around €600,000 (US\$725,000) in damage being to sports infrastructure alone. Schools in the town were closed due to damage and power outages. Around 90 percent of the homes in 8 parishes were damaged by Leslie. The storm broke tiles on several streets and knocked down trees. A pavilion was deroofed in the village of Simões. Municipal authorities dispensed generators to multiple towns in the Soure municipality. In the Mira Municipality, regions were left without potable water, power, and outside contact for over a week. At least 5,000 homes sustained damage during the storm. Equipment and greenhouses also sustained damage. A hospital and firestation in Mira lost power during the storm; power was not restored until 14 October. Eight schools were closed in the municipality, due to a lack of water and power. The Equestrian Center of Montemor-o-Velho was almost entirely destroyed by the storm. A nursing home and a pavilion in Montemor-o-Velho were both deroofed. Another pavilion suffered damage to its supports, rendering it unusable. Pools were damaged in Condeixa-a-Nova, and three families were left homeless.
The power company EDP declared a state of emergency in Coimbra, as a result of damage to electrical infrastructure. A number of high voltage power poles were either felled or bent by the storm. At least 4,000 transformers were damaged by the storm. Several buildings owned by the University of Coimbra suffered damage to their ceilings. The university stadium and a botanical garden also sustained damage, while a radio tower was toppled during the storm. Over a dozen streets were blocked by fallen trees. The electric traction of trolleys was severely impaired across several streets in Coimbra, greatly restricting the availability of service. Scaffolding and signage were damaged across the municipality. National Road 1 was closed in two places between Mealhada and Coimbra due to fallen trees. In Senhor da Serra, solar panels used to power a school were damaged, which caused the school to close for a day. A sanctuary, a chapel, and seven greenhouses received roof damage. A sports field and over a dozen homes were also damaged.
#### Leiria District
In the Buçaco National Forest, Leslie left 60 people in the Palace Hotel and another 14 in houses cut off from the outside world for days. A man was injured in the Marinha Grande Municipality, Leira district, when a door was blown off a structure and struck him. In the municipality, a lighthouse was deroofed by the storm. A hotel had a window broken, a balcony destroyed, and suffered damage to its swimming pool and waterpark. Nearly 100 residences in the municipality sustained damage. The roof of Maritime Police facility was lifted away, and the structure had multiple walls destroyed. A restaurant was destroyed at Praia do Pedrógão. Winds blew away tents at the Praia da Vieira, prompting the evacuation of 60 people. Damage in the municipality was estimated to be €5 million (US\$6.1 million). Around 50 campers were evacuated in Alcobaça. The A17 highway connecting Leiria to Aveiro was closed due to fallen trees. A gas leak also occurred at a restaurant.
Four parishes in Pombal municipality lacked power and water, and communication services were cut. A school was closed due to a lack of power. In the parish of Louriçal, powerlines and trees had fallen in several locations.
#### Aveiro and Porto Districts
The European women's roller hockey championship, which was taking place in Mealhada, was stopped in its final minutes after the roof of the sports facility was damaged, windows shattered, and debris littered the track. Players took refuge in locker rooms. Shipyards and a pavilion were damaged in Mealhada municipality, and a cafeteria sustained damage in Alameda municipality.
A blackout occurred in Porto on a street in Trofa after a street light toppled over. Two metro stations and several pavilions were utilized as shelters for the homeless in Lisbon during the storm. Around 30 residences were left without power in Valongo after a high-voltage power pole toppled. The Mestra Silva sank off the coast of Esmoriz during the storm, killing one and leaving another three missing; the captain of the ship was rescued and hospitalized.
#### Other districts
Leslie brought wind gusts of 100–120 km/h (62–75 mph) to the Madeira archipelago. A vault at the Convento da Saudação in Évora partially collapsed due to strong winds from Leslie. A 300-year-old ash tree near the Largo da Misericórdia sustained damage during the storm. Scaffolding attached to buildings collapsed in Lisbon. One person was killed by a falling tree in Amieiro. At least 70 trees fell and 73 structures were damaged in Viseu municipality. Strong waves from Leslie deposited sand at the entrance to the Albufeira Lagoon as the storm moved ashore. Following the storm, water current velocities were greatly diminished for multiple weeks, causing the lagoon's entrance to close entirely by 9 November.
### Spain
Leslie brought torrential rainfall and flooding to the autonomous communities of Andalusia, Catalonia, Castilla-La Mancha, the Balearic Islands, and Valencia. The storm caused at least 17 injuries across Spain. Heavy rainfall caused the Sió river to overflow in Catalonia. At least 45 landslides occurred in the region. Around 247 firefighters responded to over 1,000 emergency calls in Catalonia. In Castilla y León, 100 km/h (62 mph) winds downed trees and branches on roads in dozens of locations. The R1, R2, and R11 lines of the Rodalies de Catalunya and five roads, including the C-17 highway in Barcelona, were closed as a result of fallen trees. Girona and Barcelona experienced 14,000 power outages and 12 roads were impassable due to floodwaters; the latter forced the suspension of school transportation services for six municipalities. A gas station roof was blown off in the Malgrat del Mar neighborhood in Barcelona. Six people had to be evacuated from surrounding properties when a building collapsed in Tortosa. Over 200 mm (7.9 in) of rain fell in Montseny, and 209.3 mm (8.24 in) of rain fell in Viladrau. Strong winds caused a wall to collapse in Santo Ángel, forcing the closure of a road. The Albujón highway was closed in Cartagena, due to the storm. A fair was canceled in Avenida de Los Toreros after a tree fell and roofs of two stalls were ripped off. The Toledo Cathedral sustained damage to its cornice, with a 20 kg (44 lb) piece falling off. A tunnel flooded in Beniaján, trapping a vehicle.
Several skates turned upside down in El Prat de Llobregat, and in Palomares, the masts of two skates were snapped and another was bent. Detritus plant matter and other dregs were swept onto the Sant Salvador beach by the storm, covering most of it. An Algerian Kilo-class submarine and its accompanying tugboat, Al Moussif, anchored in the Spanish-controlled Ares Estuary during the storm.
An electrical cable snapped in Zamora, sparking a ditch fire and leaving 390 residences without power. A crane toppled over, striking a building in Soria.
### France
Leslie and another system combined to cause severe flooding in the Aude, which prompted the issuance of a red alert for the department; the floods were considered to have been the worst since 1891. A 12-hour rainfall total of 295 mm (11.6 in) was reported in the town of Trèbes. Around 1,000 people were evacuated in the Pezens Municipality after a dam overflowed. In the village of Veillardonnel, houses and streets were flooded and vehicles were swept away by floodwaters. In Veillardonnel and Conques-sue-Orbiel, floodwaters reached the height of first-floor windows. The Aude River rose over 7 m (23 ft) to reach 7.6 m (25 ft) in Trèbes. In Puichéric, the Aude River reached a level never before seen, besting the previous record which was set in October 1871. Floodwaters up to 1 m (3.3 ft) deep flooded homes in Villegailhenc. A bridge also collapsed in the town. At least 210 mm (8.3 in) of rain fell in Hérault. Around 6,000 people lost power in the Aude and another 2,000 in Hérault. Police asked citizens in the Aude to remain in their houses and stay off flooded roadways.
The Leclerc promenade in Sète was closed due to 7.6 m (25 ft)-high surf and 111 km/h (69 mph) wind gusts. A total of 15 people were killed throughout the Aude as a result of the floods: six in Trèbes, three in Villegailhenc, two in Villalier, one in Veillardonnel, one in Carcassonne, and one in Saint-Couat-d'Aude. At least 75 additional people were injured in the department. Flooding interrupted railway traffic along the Béziers-Narbonne section and other routes in Carcassonne. Several roads in Carcassonne were blocked by felled trees, and cars were either swept away by floodwaters or destroyed. Schools and universities throughout the city were closed from 15 to 16 October. In the villages surrounding Carcassonne, flash flooding overturned vehicles, damaged roadways, and caused homes to collapse. Multiple waterspouts occurred near the region bordering Spain. At least 700 municipalities experienced flood damage, with an estimated total of €220 million (US\$254 million).
### Elsewhere
The Alta, a freighter ship, experienced an unrepairable mechanical issue. The United States Coast Guard and the crew considered towing the ship, but ultimately abandoned it due to the nearby Hurricane Leslie. The ship ran ashore in Ireland on 16 February 2020.
Météo-France issued a yellow alert for the overseas territory of Martinique on 3 October due to high surf generated by Leslie. The highest surf experienced in Martinique was 2.5 m (8.2 ft) in the Dominica Channel.
From late September through early October, Leslie brought high surf to the East Coast of the United States, inducing the highest swell observed in some locations for years. Leslie also generated the single-longest period of tropical swells observed in the Outer Banks in the last 20 years, producing surf at chest height or higher. The highest surf was observed on 26–28 September, when Leslie was a powerful extratropical cyclone with hurricane-force winds. Leslie and a low-pressure system inhibited a trough from tracking eastward from 29 to 30 September, causing fog to persist for 32 hours in Ferryland, Newfoundland.
## Aftermath
### Portugal
A marketplace was closed in Figueira da Foz due to roof damage, causing losses of €700 thousand (US\$853 thousand) to local fishermen. Tree removal work began immediately after the storm; around 150 trucks were mobilized to remove the fallen trees. However, the Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests estimated that the removal work would take at least 6 months. Around 80 percent of the trees planted in pine forests along the coast of Leiria, in areas heavily affected by wildfires and Leslie, died. In order to aid the recovery of the forest, plantings would continue for multiple years. Roads were also to be improved as a part of the project, which had a financial backing of €18 million (US\$21.9 million). Around €220,000 (US\$268,000) were donated to fund the removal and sawing of felled trees in the Bussaco National Forest. Additional funds were donated to finance the planting of over 35,000 additional trees. Near the Palace Hotel, 100 trees were planted in an area damaged by Leslie in order to honor the life of Nelson Mandela. Despite being considered a public interest, the 300-year-old ash tree was cut down on 14 November 2019.
Months after Leslie, students protested about the condition of the College of Arts building at the University of Coimbra, which was one of those damaged during the storm. In Chernache, the Aerodrome Bissaya Barreto was closed from 30 May–7 June 2019, due to additional problems after Leslie had removed its windsock. Around 10,000 personnel were mobilized to deal with fallen trees and landslides in Mira. Municipal authorities worked to clear fallen trees and repair broken walls and signage. Authorities activated the emergency municipal plan in Montemor-o-Velho, Figueira da Foz, Condeixa-a-Nova, Soure, Coimbra, and Mira to aid with cleanup and relief efforts. The district emergency plan was activated for Coimbra district. Fifty generators were provided by Pombal municipal officials to restore power to residences and small businesses. The Portuguese government anticipated an expenditure of €36 million (US\$43.8 million) would be required to aid the forest industry. Fisheries near Figueira da Foz operated at below normal capacity through 2020, due to a reduction in sardine supply that occurred after Leslie moved through the area. Although the Portuguese government agreed to cover 70 percent of the costs of reconstruction for the Equestrian Center of Montemor-o-Velho, it had not provided the funds two years post-storm.
Initially, on 27 November 2018, the Portuguese government rejected a proposal to provide relief funds for victims of the storm. The government provided €1.4 million (US\$1.7 million) out of a maximum of €8.3 million (US\$10.1 million) in aid to 24 municipalities in 2019. They provided another €3.6 million (US\$4.3 million) to those municipalities in 2020. The legislature allocated €20 million (US\$24.3 million) in aid to the agricultural sector. The Portuguese government opened up €15 million (US\$17.7 million) in relief funds for farmers who sustained damage to buildings, equipment, livestock, and permanent crops. At least seven companies received financial aid totalling €391,000 (US\$478,000). Social organizations that experienced large financial woes had not received relief funding from the Portuguese government two years after the storm. The legislative body was criticised for being slow in authorising the release of funds to these organizations. The Coimbra City Council approved a measure on 30 June to repair the Celas Integrated Sports Center and a building at the Campo Municipal da Arregaça, both of which were severely damaged by Leslie. Despite repairs having taken place at the sports center, it remained closed nearly a year after Leslie passed through the region.
In 2021, the Rural Development Program provided €98,000 (US\$120,000) in aid to help repair damage caused in the Choupal National Forest. At least 5,000 new trees were to be planted and 700 damaged ones either cut down or trimmed. To aid recovery efforts, €5 million (US\$6.1 million) in funds were approved for a recovery plan for the Leiria National Forest in the Marinha Grande Municipality. The plan included the planting of at least 230 trees to restore the forest after Leslie and a 2017 fire destroyed most of it. The Miranda do Corvo city council approved €74,850 (US\$91,400) in funds to rebuild the Senhor da Serra Pavilion, which was entirely destroyed by the storm. The council also approved €34,085 (US\$41,600) in aid to repair the headquarters for the Vale do Açor Recreational, Cultural and Sports Association.
### France
After the storm, victims in the Aude proceeded to shelters or lodged with their neighbors, and schools were closed. Around 700 firefighters, 160 police officers, and rescue agencies took part in cleanup and rescue operations in the department. Seven helicopters and one plane were mobilized for search and rescue missions in the Aude. Authorities responded to at least 250 emergencies. The French Insurance Federation recorded 35,000 claims of damage in regards to the floods caused by Leslie, with 27,000 of those occurring in the Aude. Collectively, €17 million (US\$20 million) in advances were paid to claimants.
## See also
- Other tropical cyclones named Leslie
- List of Azores hurricanes
- Tropical cyclone effects in Europe
- 1842 Spain hurricane
- Hurricane Ginger (1971)
- Hurricane Vince (2005)
- Hurricane Nadine (2012)
- Hurricane Ophelia (2017)
- Subtropical Storm Alpha (2020)
|
50,454,053 |
Sabrina Sidney
| 1,105,172,876 |
British foundling girl taken in when she was 12 by author Thomas Day
|
[
"1757 births",
"1843 deaths",
"Adoption, fostering, orphan care and displacement",
"Burials at Kensal Green Cemetery",
"Deaths from asthma",
"People from Clerkenwell",
"People from Greenwich",
"People from Lichfield",
"People from Shenfield",
"Women of the Regency era",
"Women of the Victorian era"
] |
Sabrina Bicknell (1757 – 8 September 1843), better known as Sabrina Sidney, was a British woman abandoned at the Foundling Hospital in London as a baby, and taken in at the age of 12 by author Thomas Day, who tried to mould her into his perfect wife. She grew up to marry one of Day's friends, instead, and eventually became a school manager.
Inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's book Emile, or On Education, Day decided to educate two girls without any frivolities, using his own concepts, after being rejected by several women, and struggling to find a wife who shared his ideology. In 1769, Day and his barrister friend, John Bicknell, chose Sidney and another girl, Lucretia, from orphanages, and falsely declared they would be indentured to Day's friend Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Day took the girls to France to begin Rousseau's methods of education in isolation. After a short time, he returned to Lichfield with only Sidney, having deemed Lucretia inappropriate for his experiment. He used unusual, eccentric, and sometimes cruel techniques to try to increase her fortitude, such as firing blanks at her skirts, dripping hot wax on her arms, and having her wade into a lake fully dressed to test her resilience to cold water.
When Sidney reached her teenage years, Day was persuaded by Edgeworth that his ideal wife experiment had failed and he should send her away, as it was inappropriate for Day to live with her unchaperoned. He then arranged for Sidney to undergo experimental vocational and residential changes—first attending a boarding school, then becoming an apprentice to a dressmaker family, and eventually being employed as Day's housekeeper. Having seen changes in Sidney, Day proposed marriage, though he soon called this off when she did not follow his strict instructions; he again sent her away, this time to a boarding house, where she later found work as a lady's companion.
In 1783, Bicknell sought out Sidney and proposed marriage, telling her the truth about Day's experiment. Horrified, she confronted Day in a series of letters; he admitted the truth but refused to apologise. Sidney married Bicknell, and the couple had two children before his death in 1787. Sidney went on to work with schoolmaster Charles Burney, managing his schools.
In 1804, Anna Seward published a book about Sidney's upbringing. Edgeworth followed up with his memoirs, in which he claimed Sidney loved Day. Sidney herself, on the other hand, said she was miserable with Day and that he treated her as a slave.
## Early life
Sidney was born in 1757 in Clerkenwell, London, and was left at the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children (more commonly known as the Foundling Hospital) in London on 24 May 1757 by an anonymous individual. This person left a note explaining that the baby's baptismal name was Manima Butler and that she had been baptised in St James's Church, Clerkenwell. Her name was likely a misspelling of Monimia, but there were no baptismal records for any spelling of the name at the parish.
One of the requirements of the Foundling Hospital was that babies were to be less than six months old at the time of admittance, but the hospital did not keep more accurate records of age. Another requirement was that foundlings be given a new name and a reference number, so Sidney became Girl Ann Kingston no. 4759. She was taken in by a wet nurse, Mary Penfold, who brought her to Wotton, Surrey, where she remained until 1759, when she was two years old. Although it was usual for foundlings to remain with their wet nurse until the age of five or six, the Foundling Hospital had received an influx of new babies and moved many children who no longer required nursing, including Sidney, to the Shrewsbury branch of the Foundling Hospital. The Shrewsbury building was not completed until 1765, so in the meantime Sidney and another foundling were cared for by a nurse, Ann Casewell, at her home.
## Day's experiment
### Background
Thomas Day was a bachelor who had inherited his fortune from his father when he was an infant. Described as having a face pockmarked from smallpox, a brooding personality, and a short temper, Day attended Corpus Christi College, Oxford, to study philosophy. It was there that he decided to dedicate his life to becoming a virtuous man, shunning luxury and focusing on altruism. Around the same time he developed a list of requirements for his future wife, that she should be subservient and pure but also able to discuss philosophy and live without frivolities. These high standards, combined with his generally unlikeable personality, meant that his advances were rejected by several women while he was at university.
Day was introduced to the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau by his friend Richard Lovell Edgeworth; the pair shared a particular affinity for Rousseau's work on education in the book Emile, or On Education. On leaving Oxford, Edgeworth and Day attempted to teach Edgeworth's first son, Dick, in the style of Emile, a learning-by-doing approach. Accompanying Edgeworth to Ireland as Dick's tutor, Day fell in love and was spurned first by Edgeworth's sister, and then by at least three other women in quick succession.
Day came to the conclusion that he would not be able to find a wife who would meet his high standards and largely blamed women's education for this. Inspired by the character of Sophie in Rousseau's Emile, he resolved to "create" his ideal wife by raising her from adolescence, using the techniques laid out in the book. Day was approaching financial independence, when he would have full access to the money left to him, and conspired with his barrister friend, John Bicknell, to find two girls who could be taken into his care to be groomed as a perfect wife.
### Choosing the girls
Just after Day's 21st birthday in June 1769, he and John Bicknell travelled to the Shrewsbury Orphan Hospital to choose the first girl for his experiment. Sidney was 12 years old at the time, described as "a clear auburn brunette, with darker eyes more glowing bloom and chestnut tresses". She was slender, and had long eyelashes and a pleasant voice. Day was struggling to choose a girl for the experiment, and Bicknell quickly picked her out. The pair did not tell the orphanage secretary, Samuel Magee, about the planned experiment. Instead they told him that she was to be indentured as a servant at Edgeworth's country house in Berkshire, waiving the £4 () fee they would have received for the apprenticeship. In line with the orphanage's requirements that responsibility be held by a married man, Edgeworth would be legally accountable for Sidney, despite him not being present nor even aware of the arrangement.
The apprenticeship was approved by the governors of the orphanage on 30 June 1769; Day and Bicknell collected Sidney on 17 August. She was brought to lodgings in London, where she met Edgeworth for the first time. Day changed her name to Sabrina Sidney: Sabrina, the Latin name for the River Severn, which her orphanage overlooked; and Sidney after Algernon Sidney, one of Day's heroes. Day became a benefactor, and subsequently governor, of the Foundling Hospital, and on 20 September 1769 he chose another girl for his experiment, renaming her Lucretia after the Roman matron.
Day had Bicknell draw up a contract to define the terms of the girls' indenture. Within one year, he would choose which girl he intended to marry, and the other would be given as an apprentice to a woman in a trade, along with a fee of £100 (). He would give a further £400 () upon the girl's marriage or if she were to start her own business. He would marry his intended bride or, if he decided not to, would gift her the sum of £500 (). Bicknell acted as guarantor for the contract.
### Education in France
Day wished for the girls to be isolated from external influences while he educated them so, at the beginning of November 1769, he decided to move them to France. It is also possible that he did this to protect himself from the legal ramifications of his experiment, as well as societal gossip. The trio travelled over 600 miles to Avignon, renting a house in le quartier des fusteries. The girls could speak no French and Day employed no English-speaking servants, to be sure that he would be the only person to influence them.
Day focussed on the girls' education, in the style of Emile. He expanded on the teaching they had received from the Foundling Hospital in reading and basic arithmetic, and also taught them how to write. He believed that the girls should be able to manage the house, so they were charged with cooking and cleaning as well as other housework. Finally, he wanted to be able to debate complex concepts with them, so he taught them rudimentary theories in physics and geography, tasking them with observing the changing of the seasons, and recording details of sunrises and sunsets. He also imparted to them Rousseau's philosophical contempt for luxury.
During his stay in France, Day regularly corresponded with Edgeworth. He said that both girls were passionate about their studies, Sidney more so. Day also related anecdotes, one concerning a trip on the Rhone where the boat overturned and he rescued both girls single-handedly as neither could swim. He described an incident in which he challenged a French Army officer to a duel, even producing a set of dueling pistols, simply as a manner of engaging or encouraging conversation with his young students; the officer apologised and explained he did not mean any offence, calming the situation.
Accounts by 19th-century historians suggest that Day grew impatient with the girls when they became bored with their lessons and began to squabble, and that he also spent significant time nursing them through a bout of smallpox. These accounts may have been exaggerated as both girls had been inoculated against smallpox, and their strict upbringing meant they would not have rebelled excessively.
### Return to England
While in France, Day struggled over which girl to choose to take forward with the experiment. Both were beautiful; Lucretia was more cheerful, Sidney more reserved and studious. The trio returned to England in spring 1770, by which time Day had finally decided that he would carry on with Sidney's training. Edgeworth explained that each of Day's projects with Sabrina had been successful, but he had come to the conclusion that Lucretia was "invincibly stupid". Day apprenticed Lucretia to a milliner in Ludgate Hill, and took Sidney to Stowe House in Lichfield, where her training could continue. The household would have had no more than a couple of servants, leaving Sidney to maintain the four floors of the house. Her tutoring continued at the same time, with one-on-one lessons from Day on a variety of subjects.
Day extended his tutoring to fortify Sidney against hardship, again based upon his interpretation of Rousseau's Emile. The book explains the concept of "negative education", protecting a person from vices rather than teaching them virtues. Day interpreted this to mean that submitting Sidney to tests of endurance would help to create a woman with hardened nerves. One example given by Rousseau was helping Emile become accustomed to explosions such as fireworks by firing pistols with small amounts of powder near him, gradually increasing the amount of powder. Day, on the other hand, fired a pistol loaded with powder directly at Sidney's petticoat, not telling her that there was no shot in it.
In an attempt to increase her resistance to pain he would drop hot sealing wax on her back and arms or stick pins in her, commanding her not to cry out. He would test her ability to keep secrets by telling her that his life was in danger and she should tell no one. To increase her resistance to the cold, Day instructed Sidney to wade into Stowe Pool until the water reached her neck, then lie in the nearby meadow until her clothes and hair had dried in the sun. Finally, to test her resistance to luxury, he gave her a big box of handmade silk clothes and had her throw them on a fire. Day had limited success with these techniques. Sidney became able to endure hot wax dripped on her arm without flinching, but she did tell others of his secret techniques, and could not help screaming whenever he fired his gun at her.
During their time at Stowe House, Day introduced Sidney to members of the local intellectual circle, including the priest at Lichfield Cathedral, Thomas Seward. Seward and his wife hoped that Day might be a suitor for their daughter, Anna, and Anna's writings of the time show her interest in Day. Anna was also enchanted by Sidney, who became the link between Day and the Seward family. Anna took a keen interest in Sidney's story, as her father had taken in Honora Sneyd when Sneyd's mother had died.
## Moving away from Day
By 1770, Sidney began to question Day's techniques and to complain about the chores she had to perform. In December, the propriety of Day's arrangement with Sidney was questioned by the local community, especially Anna Seward. Edgeworth joined Day for Christmas at Stowe, and convinced him that his experiment had been unsuccessful. He also persuaded Day that Sidney was too old to live with him without a chaperone. Day appeared to accept Edgeworth's point of view, as he paid for Sidney to attend Sutton Coldfield boarding school in Warwickshire early in 1771. She remained at the boarding school for three years, including weekends and holidays, with infrequent visits from Day. The school normally focused on preparing high society daughters for marriage, with subjects such as needlework and the arts. Day stipulated that she was to be taught academic subjects but should not dance or learn music.
In 1774, Day visited Sidney to inform her that she would be apprenticed to the Parkinsons, a family of dressmakers, as Day believed the profession would not expose her to temptation. She was delivered to the family with the stipulation that she should work hard at chores and be denied luxuries. The Parkinsons, however, treated Sidney well, to the extent that Day later chastised them for not instilling "industry and frugality" in her. Less than a year later the Parkinsons' business went bankrupt, leaving Sidney without an apprenticeship and nowhere to live. Day arranged for her to stay with his friends, the Keir family, and implied that she could take on the role of housekeeper at his own home. Day again considered Sidney, who was now 18, a potential wife, but did not let her know of his intentions, nor that her upbringing was part of his experiment.
### Broken engagement
Over the next few months, Day returned to moulding Sidney to meet his requirements for the ideal woman, choosing what she would wear, and pushing his ideas of frugality upon her. Sidney took on all the ideas willingly and Day believed he had finally created a woman who would meet all his requirements. He was so confident that he talked openly of marrying Sidney, though she was unaware of his intentions. Eventually one of Day's friends let her know that he hoped to marry her. Sidney confronted Day about the rumours and he admitted they were true, neglecting to mention that he had hoped to marry her since the day he met her.
Sidney did not refuse the proposal, so Day planned the wedding while she considered it further and eventually agreed. During the preparations, Day left Sidney with friends for a few days, giving her strict instructions on what she should wear. When he returned to find her in an outfit that did not meet his requirements, he flew into a rage and Sidney fled for a few hours, so Day called off the engagement. Sidney was sent to a boarding house in Birmingham and given a stipend of £50 per annum (). Day resolved never to see her again.
## Marriage
After her engagement to Day ended, Sidney spent eight years at boarding houses around Birmingham. Day met and went on to marry an heiress, Esther Milnes, in 1778. Sidney met an apothecary, Jarvis Wardley, who proposed marriage in an acrostic poem. She contacted Day for advice, and he told her in absolute terms not to marry Wardley, even writing an acrostic poem for her to use in turning him down. In 1783, she had become a lady's companion in Newport, Shropshire. It was there that she was approached by Day's friend, the man who helped choose her at the foundling hospital, John Bicknell. Bicknell was single and had spent the majority of his earnings from his law career in gambling dens. He had not paid much attention to Sidney since selecting her with Day, but proposed marriage immediately.
Sidney again consulted Day on the prospective engagement. Day did not approve, claiming the age difference was too great, although Bicknell was only two years older than Day. Bicknell decided to tell Sidney the truth about the experiment, that she was hand-picked to be Day's wife from childhood, and that all of Day's actions were designed to further his goal of turning her into the ideal bride. Horrified, Sidney wrote to Day to confront him over Bicknell's statements. Day admitted the truth but refused to apologise. After a series of letters, Day gave his consent to the marriage, telling her that the letter would be his final communication with her.
Bicknell and Sidney married on 16 April 1784 at St Philip's Cathedral, Birmingham. The same day, Day paid the £500 wedding dowry he had stipulated in the contract he had set up with Bicknell, ending his £50 () per year stipend. The couple bought a house in Shenfield and had two children, John Laurens Bicknell and Henry Edgeworth Bicknell. Bicknell carried on with his gambling habits, squandering the remaining money over the following three years. On 27 March 1787, after three years of marriage, John Bicknell died of a paralytic stroke.
Sidney and her two children were now left without an income. Day sent her a new stipend of £30 per year, () which was matched by Edgeworth. Her husband's barrister friends raised £800 () for the widow and her children. Sidney found a role as housekeeper for Charles Burney, as well as general manager of his schools in Chiswick, Hammersmith, and Greenwich. It was at his Greenwich school that her own children were educated.
Day's widow, Esther Milnes Day, continued paying Sidney's allowance after his death in 1789, and Sidney carried on her work with Burney until she was 68. By this time she was living in a four-storey house in Gloucester Circus, Greenwich, with her own servants. On 8 September 1843, Sidney died at her home of a severe asthma attack. She was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery.
## Legacy
Sidney asked her friends not to discuss her past as she believed her humble beginnings, and Day's mistreatment of her, would tarnish her reputation. Anna Seward nevertheless wrote about Sidney's upbringing in her 1804 work Memoirs on the Life of Dr. Darwin. As Seward publicly identified Sidney in the book, it was criticised by the press, and Sidney's son John was very angry to learn of his mother's past. In his 1820 memoirs, Edgeworth stated his belief that Sidney and Day made a good match and that she loved him. Sidney disagreed with these accounts, saying that Day had made her miserable, and that she had effectively been a slave.
Sidney's education has been compared to George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, which may have been inspired by her story. Strong parallels have also been drawn between Sidney's upbringing and two novels of 1871: Henry James's Watch and Ward, and Anthony Trollope's Orley Farm. The story of her life has been told in Wendy Moore's 2013 book How to Create the Perfect Wife and dramatised in the 2015 BBC Radio 4 play The Imperfect Education of Sabrina Sidney.
|
4,674,998 |
Borodino-class battlecruiser
| 1,150,306,035 |
Imperial Russian Navy warship
|
[
"Battlecruiser classes",
"Borodino-class battlecruisers",
"Proposed ships",
"World War I battlecruisers of Russia"
] |
The Borodino-class battlecruisers (Russian: Линейные крейсера типа «Измаил») were a group of four battlecruisers ordered by the Imperial Russian Navy before World War I. Also referred to as the Izmail class, they were laid down in late 1912 at Saint Petersburg for service with the Baltic Fleet. Construction of the ships was delayed by a lack of capacity among domestic factories and the need to order some components from abroad. The start of World War I slowed their construction still further, as the imported components were often not delivered and domestic production was diverted into areas more immediately useful for the war effort.
Three of the four ships were launched in 1915 and the fourth in 1916. Work on the gun turrets lagged, and it became evident that Russian industry would not be able to complete the ships during the war. The Russian Revolution of 1917 halted all work on the ships, which was never resumed. Although some consideration was given to finishing the hulls that were nearest to completion, the three furthest from completion were sold for scrap by the Soviet Union during the early 1920s. The Soviet Navy proposed to convert Izmail, the ship closest to completion, to an aircraft carrier in 1925, but the plan was cancelled after political manoeuvring by the Red Army cut funding and she was eventually scrapped in 1931.
## Design and development
After the end of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, the Russian Naval General Staff decided that it needed a squadron of fast armoured cruisers that could use their speed to engage the leader of an enemy's battle line, as Admiral Tōgō had done against the Russian fleet during the Battle of Tsushima. The Naval General Staff initially called for a ship with high speed (28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph)), 305-millimetre (12 in) guns, and limited protection (a waterline belt of 190 mm or 7.5 in). The Tsar, head of the Russian government, approved construction of four such ships on 5 May 1911, but the State Duma session ended before the proposal could be voted on. Preliminary bids for the ships were solicited from private builders, but the bids proved to be very high, leading to a reconsideration of the requirements. The Naval General Staff issued a new specification on 1 July 1911 for a ship with a speed of only 26.5 knots (49.1 km/h; 30.5 mph) and with armour increased to 254 mm (10 in). The armament was increased to nine 356-millimetre (14 in) guns in three non-superfiring triple-gun turrets, based on a false rumour that the Germans were increasing the calibre of the guns in their battleships. The Imperial Russian Navy believed that widely separating the main gun turrets and their magazines reduced the chance of a catastrophic ammunition explosion, reduced the silhouette of the ship and improved stability without superfiring turrets and their tall barbettes.
The Naval Ministry solicited new bids on 8 September from 23 shipbuilders, domestic and foreign, but only 7 responded, even after the deadline was extended by a month. Several designs were rejected for not meeting the revised criteria. In the meantime, the Artillery Section of the Main Administration of Shipbuilding had decided that it preferred a four-turret design, and new bids were solicited in May 1912 from the leading contenders from the first round of bidding. The eventual winner was a design by the Admiralty Shipyard in Saint Petersburg which had the extra turret added to a new hull section inserted into the original three-turret design.
The Duma approved construction in May 1912, before the design was finalised, and allocated 45.5 million roubles for each ship. The additional gun turret and consequent increase in the size of the ships led to the ships being overbudget by about 7 million roubles each, and some money was diverted from the budget for the Svetlana-class cruiser to cover the discrepancy. Orders were placed on 18 September 1912 for a pair of ships each from the Admiralty Shipyard and the Baltic Works, also of Saint Petersburg. The first pair was to be ready for trials on 14 July 1916, and the second pair on 14 September 1916.
Full-scale armour trials in 1913 revealed serious weaknesses in the Borodinos' proposed protection scheme. The obsolete ironclad Chesma had been modified with armour protection identical to that used by the Gangut-class battleships, then under construction. The deck and turret-roof armour proved to be too thin, and the structure supporting the side armour was not strong enough to withstand the shock of impact from heavy shells. The design of the Borodinos' armour was similar in construction to that of the Ganguts and therefore needed to be modified, which slowed construction. The Borodinos' deck armour was reinforced with extra plates and the thickness of the turret roofs was increased. To offset this additional weight, a planned rear conning tower was removed entirely and the thickness of the main belt was slightly reduced. Mortise and tenon joints were introduced between the armour plates along their vertical edges to better distribute the shock of a shell impact and to lessen the stress on the supporting hull structure. The launching of the first pair of ships was postponed by six months because of these changes, plus delays imposed by the many ship orders already in hand.
### General characteristics
The Borodino-class ships were 223.85 metres (734 ft 5 in) long overall. They had a beam of 30.5 metres (100 ft 1 in) and a draught of 8.81 metres (28 ft 11 in) at full load. The ships displaced 32,500 long tons (33,000 t) normally and 36,646 long tons (37,234 t) at full load. High-tensile steel was used throughout the hull with mild steel used only in areas that did not contribute to structural strength. The hull was subdivided by 25 transverse watertight bulkheads and the engine room was divided by a longitudinal bulkhead. The double bottom had a height of 1.275 metres (4 ft 2 in), and the vitals of the ship were protected by a triple bottom that added an extra 875 millimetres (2 ft 10 in) of depth. The design called for a freeboard of 8.89 metres (29 ft 2 in) forward, 6.24 metres (20 ft 6 in) amidships and 6.49 metres (21 ft 4 in) aft. The ships were fitted with three Frahm anti-rolling tanks on each side.
### Propulsion
The Borodinos were powered by four sets of steam turbines, each driving one propeller shaft using steam provided by 25 triangular Yarrow boilers with a working pressure of 17 kg/cm<sup>2</sup> (1,667 kPa; 242 psi). The turbines developed a total of 66,000 shaft horsepower (49,000 kW) and were designed to be overloaded to 90,000 shp (67,000 kW). The forward boilers were grouped into three compartments with three oil-fired boilers in each compartment. The rear boilers were in four compartments with each containing four coal-fired boilers fitted with oil sprayers to increase the burn rate. Maximum speed was estimated at 26.5 knots, although forcing the machinery would increase it to 28.5 knots (52.8 km/h; 32.8 mph). The ships were designed to carry 1,974 long tons (2,006 t) of coal and 1,904 long tons (1,935 t) of fuel oil, which gave an estimated range of 2,280 nautical miles (4,220 km; 2,620 mi) at full speed.
Two sets of steam turbines were ordered on 22 April 1913 from the Franco-Russian Works in Saint Petersburg for the Admiralty Shipyard-built ships, and the Baltic Works built the turbines for its ships, although some components were ordered from abroad. However, Western sources have long stated incorrectly that the turbines for Navarin had been ordered from AG Vulcan, and that they were taken over at start of the war for use in the Brummer-class light cruisers. As well as being contradicted by original Russian and German records, this is technically impossible, as the turbines actually specified for Navarin were of the Parsons type, while those actually employed in the German cruisers were of the Curtis pattern. In fact, the Brummer class engines had been ordered for the lead ship of the Svetlana-class cruisers.
The Borodino class had six turbo generators and two diesel generators, each rated at 320 kilowatts (430 hp). These were in four compartments below the main deck, two each fore and aft of the boiler and engine rooms. The generators powered a complex electrical system that combined alternating current for most equipment with direct current for heavy-load machinery such as the turret motors.
### Armament
The ships' primary armament consisted of a dozen 52-calibre 356-millimetre (14 in) Model 1913 guns mounted in four electrically powered turrets. The turrets were designed to elevate and traverse at a rate of 3° per second. The guns had an elevation range from −5° to +25°. They could be loaded at any angle between −5° and +15°; the expected rate of fire was three rounds per minute. Space was provided for a maximum of 80 rounds per gun. The guns fired 747.6-kilogram (1,648 lb) projectiles at a muzzle velocity of 731.5 m/s (2,400 ft/s), with a maximum range of 23,240 metres (25,420 yd).
The secondary armament consisted of twenty-four 55-calibre 130 mm (5.1 in) Pattern 1913 guns mounted in casemates in the hull, twelve per side. The guns had a maximum elevation of +20° which gave them a range of 15,364 metres (16,802 yd). They fired 36.86-kilogram (81.3 lb) projectiles at a muzzle velocity of 823 m/s (2,700 ft/s).
The anti-aircraft armament was intended to be four 38-calibre 64-millimetre (2.5 in) anti-aircraft guns fitted on the upper deck with 220 rounds carried for each gun. They fired 4.04-kilogram (8.9 lb) projectiles at a muzzle velocity of 686 m/s (2,250 ft/s). Four 75-millimetre (3.0 in) guns were to be mounted in pairs on the main turret roofs for sub-calibre training with the main guns. Six underwater 450-millimetre (17.7 in) torpedo tubes were fitted, three on each broadside; they were provided with a total of eighteen torpedoes.
### Fire control
The fore and aft main gun turrets were given a 6-metre (19 ft 8 in) rangefinder, and there was another 5-metre (16 ft 5 in) unit on top of the conning tower. These would provide data for the Geisler central artillery post analogue computer, which would then transmit commands to the gun crew. The mechanical fire-control computer would have been either a Pollen Argo range clock, which had been bought in 1913, or a domestically designed Erikson system.
### Protection
The trials with Chesma greatly affected the armour protection design of the Borodino-class ships. The Krupp cemented-armour plates were resized to match the frames and provide support for their joints; they were also locked together with mortise-and-tenon joints to better distribute the shock of a shell's impact. The 237.5-millimetre (9.4 in) waterline belt covered the middle 151.2 metres (496 ft 1 in) of the ship. It had a total height of 5.015 metres (16 ft 5 in), of which 3.375 metres (11 ft 1 in) was above the design waterline and 1.64 metres (5 ft 5 in) below. The remaining portion of the waterline was protected by 125-millimetre (4.9 in) plates. The upper belt was 100 millimetres (3.9 in) thick and had a height of 2.89 metres (9 ft 6 in). It thinned to 75 millimetres forward of the casemates and extended all the way to the bow. The rear portion of the forecastle deck was protected by an upward extension of the upper belt in the area of the forward barbettes and the upper casemates. Those casemates were protected by 100-millimetre transverse bulkheads. Behind the side armour was an inboard longitudinal splinter bulkhead that was 50 millimetres (2.0 in) thick between the middle and lower decks and decreased to 25 millimetres (0.98 in) between the middle and upper decks. The bulkhead sloped away from the edge of the lower deck to the lower edge of the armour belt with a total thickness of 75 millimetres divided between a 50-millimetre plate of Krupp non-cemented armour (KNC) layered above a 25-millimetre nickel-steel plate. The forward end of the armoured citadel was protected separately and the transverse bulkhead was therefore only 75 millimetres thick. The rear bulkhead had no other protection and was 300 millimetres (11.8 in) thick between the middle and lower decks, decreasing to 75 millimetres at the level of the armour belt.
The main gun turrets were designed with 300-millimetre sides and 150-millimetre roofs. The gun ports would have been protected by 50-millimetre plates with 25-millimetre bulkheads separating each gun inside the turrets. The barbettes were 247.5 millimetres (9.7 in) thick and decreased to 147.5 millimetres (5.8 in) when behind other armour. They were shaped like truncated cones which matched the trajectories of descending shells and thus lessened their protective value. The conning tower was 400 millimetres (15.7 in) thick and reduced to 300 millimetres below the upper deck. The funnel uptakes were protected by 50 millimetres of armour. The upper deck was 37.5 millimetres (1.5 in) thick and the middle deck consisted of 40-millimetre (1.6 in) plates of KNC on 25 millimetres of nickel-steel over the armoured citadel. The sides of the conning tower were fitted with armour plates 400 millimetres (15.7 in) thick and its roof was 250 millimetres (9.8 in) thick. Underwater protection was minimal: there was only a 10-millimetre (0.4 in) watertight bulkhead behind the upward extension of the double bottom, and this became thinner as the hull narrowed towards the end turrets.
## Construction
All four ships were officially laid down on 19 December 1912, and work began in March–April 1913. After a progress review on 4 June 1914, launching of the first pair of ships was delayed until October. When World War I began in August, the hull of Izmail was judged as being 43 per cent complete, the others lagging considerably behind. The war caused further delays as some components had been ordered from foreign manufacturers. For example, the gun turrets were intended to rest on 203 mm (8 in) roller bearings made in Germany, but attempts to order replacements from the United Kingdom and Sweden proved futile, as no company was willing and able to make the bearings. The war caused other delays, including competition for scarce resources needed by other production deemed necessary for the war. Three of the four ships were launched in 1915, but it was clear that Russian industry would not be able to complete them during the war, mostly because the turrets were seriously delayed by non-delivery of foreign-built components and a shortage of steel. They were reclassified as second rank projects by the Main Administration of Shipbuilding in 1916 and construction virtually stopped.
Various plans were made by the Naval General Staff and the Main Administration of Shipbuilding for the post-war completion of the ships, including modifying the turrets to load at a fixed angle of +4° to reduce the weight and complexity of the loading equipment. Another intended change was to lengthen the funnels by 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) to minimise smoke interference with the bridge, which had been a problem on the Gangut-class dreadnoughts. There were suggestions to improve the machinery with geared turbines, turbo-electric drive, or Föttinger's hydraulic transmission, but these were more theoretical than practical.
After the February Revolution, the condition of the ships was assessed on 28 April 1917. The ship that was furthest along was still Izmail: her hull, engines, and boilers were around 65 per cent complete, and her armour was 36 per cent complete. Her turrets were not expected to be completed until 1919. The Congress of Shipyard Workers decided to continue work on the Izmail in mid-1917, but only to provide jobs. The Provisional Government halted all work on Borodino, Kinburn, and Navarin on 24 October 1917, and the Bolsheviks ordered work on Izmail halted on 14 December 1917.
After the end of the Russian Civil War was in sight by October 1921, the victorious Bolsheviks considered finishing Izmail, and possibly Borodino, to their original design. It would have taken at least two years to build all of Izmail's turrets, even if enough guns had been available. Ten had been delivered by Vickers before the Revolution and one gun had been completed domestically in 1912, but the prospects for more guns were not promising, given the poor state of Soviet heavy industry in the wake of the civil war. Another problem was their complicated electrical system; it could not be completed under current conditions, and at least twenty months would be required to replace it with a simpler system.
The Soviets also considered finishing Kinburn and Navarin to a modified design that featured 410-millimetre (16 in) guns; a two-gun turret weighed slightly less than a triple 354 mm (13.9 in) gun turret. The proposal was rejected because the prospects of actually acquiring such guns were minimal. Domestic industry was incapable of building such large guns and the Soviets were not able to purchase the guns from any foreign company. Other ideas were examined for the three less complete ships. These included converting the hulls to cargo ships, passenger liners, or 22,000-long-ton (22,000 t) oil barges, but the hulls were thought to be too large and unwieldy for the proposed uses. None of the proposals was accepted, and all three of the less complete ships were sold to a German company for scrap on 21 August 1923 to raise much-needed cash for the government.
In May 1925, the Operational Administration of the Soviet Navy contemplated converting Izmail into an aircraft carrier with a top speed of 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph) and a capacity of 50 aircraft. She would have been armed with eight 183-millimetre (7.2 in) guns and her armour reduced to a maximum of 76 millimetres (3.0 in). This proposal was approved by Alexey Rykov, Chairman of the Council of the People's Commissars on 6 July 1925, but the Red Army was strongly opposed to spending more money on naval projects. They managed to block the project by gaining control of a commission appointed to review the needs of the Navy in December, which cancelled the project on 16 March 1926. After most of her boilers were used during the reconstructions of the battleships Parizhskaya Kommuna and Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya, Izmail was scrapped beginning in 1931 in Leningrad.
## Ships
The ships were named after battles fought by the Russian Empire:
|
213,454 |
Corvus (constellation)
| 1,172,480,740 |
Constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere
|
[
"Constellations",
"Constellations listed by Ptolemy",
"Corvus (constellation)",
"Southern constellations"
] |
Corvus is a small constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Its name means "crow" in Latin. One of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, it depicts a raven, a bird associated with stories about the god Apollo, perched on the back of Hydra the water snake. The four brightest stars, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, and Beta Corvi, form a distinctive quadrilateral in the night sky.
With an apparent magnitude of 2.59, Gamma Corvi—also known as Gienah—is the brightest star in the constellation. It is an aging blue giant around four times as massive as the Sun. The young star Eta Corvi has been found to have two debris disks. Three star systems have exoplanets, and a fourth planetary system is unconfirmed. TV Corvi is a dwarf nova—a white dwarf and brown dwarf in very close orbit.
## History and mythology
In the Babylonian star catalogues dating from at least 1100 BCE, what later became known as Corvus was called the Raven (MUL.UGA.MUSHEN). As with more familiar Classical astronomy, it was placed sitting on the tail of the Serpent (Greek Hydra). The Babylonian constellation was sacred to Adad, the god of rain and storm; in the second Millennium BCE it would have risen just before the autumnal rainy season. John H. Rogers observed that Hydra signified Ningishzida, the god of the underworld in the Babylonian compendium MUL.APIN. He proposed that Corvus and Crater (along with Hydra) were death symbols and marked the gate to the underworld. These two constellations, along with the eagle Aquila and the fish Piscis Austrinus, were introduced to the Greeks around 500 BCE; they marked the winter and summer solstices respectively. Furthermore, Hydra had been a landmark as it had straddled the celestial equator in antiquity. Corvus and Crater also featured in the iconography of Mithraism, which is thought to have been of middle-eastern origin before spreading into Ancient Greece and Rome.
Corvus is associated with the myth of Apollo and his lover Coronis the Lapith. Coronis had been unfaithful to Apollo; when he learned this information from a pure white crow (or raven in some versions), he turned its feathers black in a fit of rage. Another legend associated with Corvus is that a crow stopped on his way to fetch water for Apollo, to eat figs. Instead of telling the truth to Apollo, he lied and said that a snake, Hydra, kept him from the water, while holding a snake in his talons as proof. Apollo, realizing this was a lie, flung the crow (Corvus), cup (Crater), and snake (Hydra) into the sky. He further punished the wayward bird by ensuring it would forever be thirsty, both in real life and in the heavens, where the Cup is just out of reach.
### In other cultures
In Chinese astronomy, the stars of Corvus are located within the Vermilion Bird of the South (南方朱雀, Nán Fāng Zhū Què). The four main stars depict a chariot, Zhen, which is the 28th and final lunar mansion; Alpha and Eta mark the linchpins for the wheels, and Zeta is Changsha, a coffin. In Indian astronomy, the five main stars of Corvus represent a hand or fist corresponding to the Hasta, the 13th nakshatra or lunar mansion.
Corvus was recognized as a constellation by several Polynesian cultures and used as a guide for ocean navigation. In the Marquesas Islands, it was called Mee; in Pukapuka, it was called Te Manu, and in the Society Islands, it was called Metua-ai-papa. To Torres Strait Islanders, Corvus was the right hand (holding kupa fruit) of the huge constellation Tagai, a man fishing.
The Bororo people of Mato Grosso in central Brazil regarded the constellation as a land tortoise Geriguigui, while the Tucano people of the northwestern Amazon region saw it as an egret. To the Tupi people of São Luís Island in Brazil, Corvus might have been seen as a grill or barbecue—seychouioura, on which fish were grilled. The depiction could have also referred to the Great Square of Pegasus.
## Characteristics
Covering 184 square degrees and hence 0.446% of the sky, Corvus ranks 70th of the 88 constellations in area. It is bordered by Virgo to the north and east, Hydra to the south, and Crater to the west. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "Crv". The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of six segments (illustrated in infobox). In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between and , while the declination coordinates are between −11.68° and −25.20°. Its position in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere means that the whole constellation is visible to observers south of 65°N.
## Features
### Stars
The German cartographer Johann Bayer used the Greek letters Alpha through Eta to label the most prominent stars in the constellation. John Flamsteed gave nine stars Flamsteed designations, while one star he designated in the neighbouring constellation Crater—31 Crateris—lay within Corvus once the constellation boundaries were established in 1930. Within the constellation's borders, there are 29 stars brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6.5.
Four principal stars, Delta, Gamma, Epsilon, and Beta Corvi, form a quadrilateral asterism known as "the "Spica's Spanker" or "the Sail". Although none of the stars are particularly bright, they lie in a dim area of the sky, rendering the asterism easy to distinguish in the night sky. Gamma and Delta serve as pointers toward Spica. Also called Gienah, Gamma is the brightest star in Corvus at magnitude 2.59. Its traditional name means "wing", the star marking the left wing in Bayer's Uranometria. 154±1 light-years from Earth, it is a blue-white hued giant star of spectral type B8III that is 4.2+0.4
−0.3 times as massive, and 355 times as luminous as the Sun. Around 160+40
−30 million years old, it has largely exhausted its core hydrogen and begun expanding and cooling as it moves away from the main sequence. A binary star, it has a companion orange or red dwarf star of spectral type K5V to M5V that is about 0.8 times as massive as the Sun. Around 50 astronomical units distant from Gamma Corvi A, it is estimated to complete an orbit in 158 years. Delta Corvi, traditionally called Algorab, is a double star divisible in small amateur telescopes. The primary is a blue-white star of magnitude 2.9, around 87 light-years from Earth. An enigmatic star around 2.7 times as massive as the Sun, it is more luminous (65–70 times that of the Sun) than its should be for its surface temperature of 10,400 K, and hence is either a 3.2 million year-old very young pre-main sequence star that has not settled down to a stable main sequence life stage, or a 260-million-year-old star that has begun to exhaust its core hydrogen and expand, cool and shine more brightly as it moves away from the main sequence. Its spectral type is given as A0IV, corresponding with the latter scenario. Warm circumstellar dust—by definition part of its inner stellar system—has been detected around Delta Corvi A. Delta Corvi B is an orange dwarf star of magnitude 8.51 and spectral class K, also surrounded by circumstellar dust. A post T-tauri star, it is at least 650 AU distant from its brighter companion and takes at least 9400 years to complete an orbit. Delta Corvi's common name means "the raven". It is one of two stars marking the right wing. Located 4.5 degrees northeast of Delta Corvi is Struve 1669, a binary star that is divisible into two stars 5.4" apart by small amateur telescopes, 280 light-years from Earth. The pair, both white stars, is visible to the naked eye at magnitude 5.2; the primary is of magnitude 5.9 and the secondary is of magnitude 6.0.
The raven's breast is marked by Beta Corvi (the proper name is Kraz), a star of magnitude 2.7 located 146 ± 1 light-years from Earth. Roughly 206 million years old and 3.7 ± 1 times as massive as the Sun, it has exhausted its core hydrogen and expanded and cooled to a surface temperature of around 5,100 K and is now a yellow bright giant star of spectral type G5II. It likely spent most of its existence as a blue-white main sequence star of spectral type B7V. Bearing the proper name of Minkar and marking the raven's nostril is Epsilon Corvi, located some 318 ± 5 light-years from Earth. It is a red giant of spectral type K2III that is around 54 times the Sun's radius and 930 times its luminosity. Around 4 times as massive as the Sun, it spent much of its life as a main-sequence star of spectral type B5V. Lying to the south of the quadrilateral between Beta and Epsilon Corvi is the orange-hued 6 Corvi, an ageing giant star of spectral type K1III that is around 70 times as luminous as the Sun. It is 331 ± 10 light-years away from Earth.
Named Alchiba, Alpha Corvi is a white-hued star of spectral type F1V and magnitude 4.0, 48.7 ± 0.1 light-years from Earth. It exhibits periodic changes in its spectrum over a three-day period, which suggests it is either a spectroscopic binary or (more likely) a pulsating Gamma Doradus-type variable. If the latter is the case, it is estimated to be 1.39 times as massive as the Sun. According to Bayer's atlas, it lies above the bird's beak.
Marking the raven's right wing is Eta Corvi, a yellow-white main-sequence star of type F2V that is 1.52 times as massive and 4.87 times as luminous as the Sun. It is 59 light-years distant from our Solar System. Two debris disks have been detected orbiting this star, one warm within 3.5 astronomical units and another out at \~150 astronomical units distant. Zeta Corvi marks the raven's neck. It is of apparent magnitude 5.21, separated by 7 arcseconds from the star HR 4691. Located 420 ± 10 light-years distant, it is a blue-white Be star of spectral type B8V, the presence of hydrogen emission lines in its spectrum indicating it has a circumstellar disc. These stars may be an optical double or a true multiple star system, with a separation of at least 50,000 astronomical units and the stars taking 3.5 million years to orbit each other. HR 4691 is itself double, composed of an ageing yellow-orange giant whose spectral type has been calculated at K0 or G3, and an F-type main-sequence star.
31 Crateris (which was originally placed in Crater by Flamsteed) is a 5.26 magnitude star which was once mistaken for a moon of Mercury. On 27 March 1974, the Mariner 10 mission detected emissions in the far ultraviolet from the planet (suggesting a satellite), but they were found to emanate from the star. It is in reality a remote binary star system with a hot blue-white star of spectral type B1.5V and a companion about which little is known. The two stars orbit each other every 2.9631 days. The primary is possibly a blue straggler of the Hyades group. The primary is around 15.5 times as massive as the Sun and 52262 times as luminous.
VV Corvi is a close spectroscopic binary, its two component stars orbiting each other with a period of 1.46 days. Both are yellow-white main-sequence stars of spectral type F5V, though the primary has begun expanding and cooling as it nears the end of its time on the main sequence. The mass ratio of the two stars is 0.775 ± 0.024. A tertiary companion was discovered during the Two Micron All-Sky Survey. W Corvi is an eclipsing binary that varies in brightness from apparent magnitude 11.16 to 12.5 over 9 hours. Its period has increased by 1/4 second over a century. It is an unusual system in that its two stars are very close to each other yet have different surface temperatures, and hence thermal transfer is not taking place as expected. SX Corvi is an eclipsing binary that is also a contact binary known as a W Ursae Majoris variable. The two component stars orbit closely enough to each other for mass to have been transferred between them—in this case the secondary having transferred a large amount of mass to the primary. RV Corvi is another eclipsing binary. Its brightness varies from apparent magnitude 8.6 to 9.16 over 18 hours. The system is composed of stars of spectral types F0 and G0, which orbit each other every 0.7473 days.
Close to Gamma Corvi and visible in the same binocular field is R Corvi, a long period (Mira) variable star. It ranges in brightness from a magnitude of 6.7 to 14.4 with a period of approximately 317 days. TT Corvi is a semiregular variable red giant of spectral type M3III and apparent magnitude 6.48 around 923 light years distant. It is around 993 times as luminous as the Sun. TU Corvi is a Delta Scuti variable—a class of short period (six hours at most) pulsating stars that have been used as standard candles and as subjects to study astroseismology. It varies by 0.025 of a magnitude around apparent magnitude 6.53 over 59 minutes.
Three star systems have confirmed planets. HD 103774 is a young yellow-white main-sequence star of apparent magnitude 7.12 that is 181 ± 5 light-years distant from Earth. It is 1.335 ± 0.03 times as massive and 3.5 ± 0.3 as luminous as the Sun. Variations in its radial velocity showed it was being orbited by a Neptune-sized planet every 5.9 days in 2013. HD 104067 is an orange dwarf of spectral type K2V of apparent magnitude 7.93 that is 69 ± 1 light-years distant from Earth. Around 80% as massive as the Sun, it is orbited by a planet 3.6 times the mass of Neptune every 55.8 days. WASP-83 has a planet around as massive as Saturn that orbits it every 5 days. It was discovered by its transit across the star in 2015. A fourth star system has an unconfirmed planet. HD 111031 is a sunlike star of spectral type G5V located 101 ± 2 light-years distant from Earth.
Ross 695 is a red dwarf star located a mere 28.9 ± 0.6 light-years distant from Earth. At apparent magnitude 11.27, it is much too faint to be seen with the unaided eye. A small star, it has around 23% the mass and radius of the Sun, but only 0.7% its luminosity. VHS J1256–1257 is a triple system of young brown dwarfs located 72.4+3.6
−3.9 light-years distant from Earth. The system consists of a central, equal-mass binary system of late-M spectral type dwarfs and an outer, planetary-mass brown dwarf companion that is widely separated at 102 ± 9 AU. DENIS-P J1228.2-1547 is a system composed of two brown dwarfs orbiting each other located 73 ± 3 light-years away from Earth. TV Corvi is a dwarf nova composed of a white dwarf and brown dwarf that orbit each other every 90 minutes. The system has a baseline magnitude of 17 that brightens periodically to magnitude 12, discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1931 and David Levy in 1990 and 2005.
### Deep-sky objects
Corvus contains no Messier objects. It has several galaxies and a planetary nebula observable with amateur telescopes. The center of Corvus is home to a planetary nebula, NGC 4361. The nebula itself resembles a small elliptical galaxy and has a magnitude of 10.3, but the magnitude 13 star at its centre gives away its true nature. Corvus also contains the Stargate (asterism).
The NGC 4038 Group is a group of galaxies across Corvus and Crater. The group may contain between 13 and 27 galaxies. The best-known member is the Antennae peculiar galaxy, located 0.25 north of 31 Crateris. It consists of two interacting galaxies—NGC 4038 and 4039—that appear to have a heart shape as seen from Earth. The name originates from the huge tidal tails that come off the ends of the two galaxies, formed because of the spiral galaxies' original rotation. Both original galaxies were spiral galaxies and are now experiencing extensive star formation due to the interaction of gas clouds. The galaxies are 45 million light-years from Earth and each has multiple ultraluminous X-ray sources, the source of which is unknown. Astronomers theorize that they may be a rare type of x-ray emitting binary stars or intermediate-mass black holes. The Antennae Galaxies appear in a telescope at the 10th magnitude. SN 2004gt was a type Ic supernova that erupted on December 12, 2004. The progenitor was not identified from older images of the galaxy, and is either a type WC Wolf–Rayet star with a mass over 40 times that of the Sun, or a star 20 to 40 times as massive as the Sun in a binary star system. SN 2007sr was a Type Ia supernova event that peaked in brightness on December 14, 2007. The galaxy has been identified as a good place to take detailed images in case of further supernovae.
NGC 4027 is another member of the NGC 4038 group, notable for its extended spiral arm. Known as the Ringtail Galaxy, it lies close to 31 Crateris. A barred spiral galaxy, its distorted shape is probably due to a past collision, possibly with the nearby NGC 4027A. NGC 4782 and NGC 4783 are a pair of merging elliptical galaxies in the northeastern part of the constellation, around 200 million light-years distant.
### Meteor showers
Two established meteor showers originate from within Corvus' boundaries. German astronomer Cuno Hoffmeister discovered and named the Corvids in 1937, after observing them between June 25 and July 2. They have not been seen since, nor was there evidence of a shower when previous records were examined. Hoffmeister noted the trajectory of the shower was similar to that of the comet 11P/Tempel–Swift–LINEAR, though this was not confirmed by Zhukov and colleagues in 2011. The shower has been tentatively linked with 4015 Wilson–Harrington. In January 2013, the MO Video Meteor Network published the discovery of the Eta Corvids, assigning some 300 meteors seen between January 20 and 26. Their existence was confirmed by data analysis later that year.
## Popular culture
In 1624, German astronomer Jakob Bartsch equated the constellation Argo Navis with Noah's Ark, linking Corvus and Columba to the crow and dove that feature in the story in Genesis.
In Action Comics \#14 (January 2013), which was published 7 November 2012, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson appears in the story, in which he determines that Superman's home planet, Krypton, orbited the red dwarf LHS 2520 in the constellation Corvus, 27.1 light-years from Earth. Tyson assisted DC Comics in selecting a real-life star that would be an appropriate parent star to Krypton, and picked the star in Corvus, and which is the mascot of Superman's high school, the Smallville Crows.
## See also
- Corvus (Chinese astronomy)
|
3,775,304 |
Cloud Gate
| 1,173,835,771 |
Sculpture in Chicago, United States
|
[
"2006 establishments in Illinois",
"2006 sculptures",
"British contemporary works of art",
"Buildings and structures celebrating the third millennium",
"Buildings and structures completed in 2006",
"Millennium Park",
"Mirrors in art",
"Outdoor sculptures in Chicago",
"Sculptures by Anish Kapoor",
"Stainless steel sculptures in the United States",
"Steel sculptures in Illinois"
] |
Cloud Gate is a public sculpture by Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor, that is the centerpiece of AT&T Plaza at Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. The sculpture and AT&T Plaza are located on top of Park Grill, between the Chase Promenade and McCormick Tribune Plaza & Ice Rink. Constructed between 2004 and 2006, the sculpture is nicknamed "The Bean" because of its shape, a name Kapoor initially disliked, but later grew fond of. Made up of 168 stainless steel plates welded together, its highly polished exterior has no visible seams. It measures 33 by 66 by 42 feet (10 by 20 by 13 m), and weighs 110 short tons (100 t; 98 long tons).
Kapoor's design was inspired by liquid mercury and the sculpture's surface reflects and distorts the city's skyline. Visitors are able to walk around and under Cloud Gate's 12-foot (3.7 m) high arch. On the underside is the "omphalos" (Greek for "navel"), a concave chamber that warps and multiplies reflections. The sculpture builds upon many of Kapoor's artistic themes, and it is popular with tourists as a photo-taking opportunity for its unique reflective properties.
The sculpture was the result of a design competition. After Kapoor's design was chosen, numerous technological concerns regarding the design's construction and assembly arose, in addition to concerns regarding the sculpture's upkeep and maintenance. Various experts were consulted, some of whom believed the design could not be implemented. Eventually, a feasible method was found, but the sculpture's construction fell behind schedule. It was unveiled in an incomplete form during the Millennium Park grand opening celebration in 2004, before being concealed again while it was completed. Cloud Gate was formally dedicated on May 15, 2006, and has since gained considerable popularity, both domestically and internationally.
## Design
Lying between Lake Michigan to the east and the Loop to the west, Grant Park has been Chicago's front yard since the mid-19th century. Its northwest corner, north of Monroe Street and the Art Institute, east of Michigan Avenue, south of Randolph Street, and west of Columbus Drive, had been Illinois Central rail yards and parking lots until 1997, when it was made available for development by the city as Millennium Park. For 2007, the park was Chicago's second largest tourist attraction, trailing only Navy Pier.
In 1999, Millennium Park officials and a group of art collectors, curators and architects reviewed the artistic works of 30 different artists and asked two for proposals. American artist Jeff Koons submitted a proposal to erect a permanent 150-foot (46 m) sculpture of a playground slide; his glass and steel design featured an observation deck 90 feet (27 m) above the ground that was accessible via an elevator. The committee chose the second design by internationally acclaimed artist Anish Kapoor. Measuring 33 by 66 by 42 feet (10 by 20 by 13 m) and weighing 110 short tons (100 t; 98 long tons), the proposal featured a seamless, stainless steel surface inspired by liquid mercury. This mirror-like surface would reflect the Chicago skyline, but its elliptical shape would distort and twist the reflected image.
In the underside of the sculpture is the omphalos, an indentation whose mirrored surface provides multiple reflections of any subject situated beneath it. The apex of the omphalos is 27 feet (8.2 m) above the ground. The concave underside allows visitors to walk underneath to see the omphalos, and through its arch to the other side so that they view the entire structure. During the grand opening week in July 2004, press reports described the omphalos as the "spoon-like underbelly". The stainless steel sculpture was originally envisioned as the centerpiece of the Lurie Garden at the southeast corner of the park. However, Park officials believed the piece was too large for the Lurie Garden and decided to locate it at AT&T Plaza, despite Kapoor's objections. Skyscrapers to the north along East Randolph Street, including The Heritage, the Smurfit-Stone Building, Two Prudential Plaza, One Prudential Plaza, and Aon Center are visible, reflected on both the east and west sides of the sculpture. around the structure, its surface acts like a fun-house mirror as it distorts their reflections.
Although Kapoor does not draw with computers, computer modeling was essential to the process of analyzing the complex form, which created numerous issues. Since the sculpture was expected to be outdoors, concerns arose that it might retain and conduct heat in a way that would make it too hot to touch during the summer and so cold that one's tongue might stick to it during the winter. The extreme temperature variation between seasons was also feared to weaken the structure. Graffiti, bird droppings and fingerprints were also potential problems, as they would affect the aesthetics of the surface. The most pressing issue was the need to create a single seamless exterior for the external shell, a feat architect Norman Foster once believed to be nearly impossible.
While the sculpture was being constructed, public and media outlets nicknamed it "The Bean" because of its shape, a name that Kapoor described as "completely stupid". Months later, Kapoor officially named the piece Cloud Gate. (Kapoor eventually accepted the nickname of "The Bean".) Critical reviews describe the sculpture as a passage between realms. Three-quarters of the sculpture's external surface reflects the sky and the name refers to it acting as a type of gate that helps bridge the space between the sky and the viewer. The sculpture and plaza are sometimes referred to jointly as "Cloud Gate on the AT&T Plaza". It is Kapoor's first public outdoor work in the United States, and is the work by which he is best known in the country according to the Financial Times.
## Construction and maintenance
The British engineering firm Atelier One provided the sculpture's structural design, and Performance Structures, Inc. (PSI) was chosen to fabricate it because of their ability to produce nearly invisible welds. The project began with PSI attempting to recreate the design in miniature. A high-density polyurethane foam model was selected by Kapoor, which was then used to design the final structure, including the interior structural components. Initially, PSI planned to build and assemble the sculpture in Oakland, California, and ship it to Chicago through the Panama Canal and St. Lawrence Seaway. However, this plan was discarded after park officials deemed it too risky, so the decision was made to transport the individual panels by truck and to assemble the structure on-site, a task undertaken by MTH Industries.
The sculpture's weight raised concerns. Estimating the thickness of the steel needed to create the sculpture's desired aesthetics before fabrication was difficult. Cloud Gate was originally estimated to weigh 60 short tons (54 t; 54 long tons) when completed. However, the final figure was almost twice as heavy at 110 short tons (100 t; 98 long tons). This extra weight required engineers to reconsider the sculpture's supporting structures. The roof of the Park Grill, upon which Cloud Gate sits, had to be built strong enough to bear the weight. The large retaining wall separating Chicago's Metra train tracks from the North Grant Park garage supports much of the weight of the sculpture and forms the back side of the restaurant. This wall, along with the rest of the garage's foundation, required additional bracing before the piece was erected. Cloud Gate is further buttressed by lateral members underneath the plaza that are anchored to the sculpture's interior structure by tie rods.
Inside Cloud Gate's polished exterior shell are several steel structures that keep the sculpture standing. PSI contracted Advanced Building and Metal Fabrication of Chico, California to build them. The first structural pieces, two type 304 stainless steel rings, were put into place in February 2004. As construction continued, crisscrossing pipe trusses were assembled between the two rings. The trusses and supporting structures were only present for the construction phases. The finished sculpture has no inner bracing. The supporting structural components were designed and constructed to ensure that no specific point was overloaded, and to avoid producing unwanted indentations on the exterior shell. The frame was also designed to expand and contract with the sculpture as temperatures fluctuate. As a result, the two large rings supporting the sculpture move independently of each other, allowing the shell to move independently of the rings.
When Cloud Gate'''s interior components were completed, construction crews prepared to work on the outer shell; this comprises 168 stainless steel panels, each 3⁄8 inch (10 mm) thick and weighing 1,000 to 2,000 pounds (450 to 910 kg). They were fabricated using three-dimensional modeling software. Computers and robots were essential in the bending and shaping of the plates, which was performed by English wheel and a robotic scanning device. Metal stiffeners were welded to each panel's interior face to provide a small degree of rigidity. About a third of the plates, along with the entire interior structure, were fabricated in Oakland. The plates were polished to 98 percent of their final state and covered with protective white film before being sent to Chicago via trucks. Once in Chicago, the plates were welded together on-site, creating 2,442 linear feet (744 m) of welded seams. Welders used keyhole welding machines rather than traditional welding guns. The plates were fabricated so precisely that no on-site cutting or filing was necessary when lifting and fitting them into position.
When construction of the shell began in June 2004, a large tent was erected around the piece to shield it from public view. Construction began with the omphalos, where plates were attached to the supporting internal steel structure, from the inside (underside) of the sculpture downward to the outermost surfaces. This sequence caused the structure to resemble a large sombrero when the bottom was complete.
The shell of Cloud Gate was fully erected for the grand opening of Millennium Park on July 15, 2004, although it was unpolished and thus unfinished, because its assembly had fallen behind schedule. The piece was temporarily uncovered on July 8 for the opening, although Kapoor was unhappy with this as it allowed the public to see the sculpture in an unfinished state. The original plan was to re-erect the tent around the sculpture for polishing on July 24, but public appreciation for the piece convinced park officials to leave it uncovered for several months. The tent was again erected in January 2005 as a 24-person crew from Ironworkers Local 63 polished the seams between each plate. In order to grind, sand and polish the seams, six levels of scaffolding were erected around the sides of the sculpture, while climbing ropes and harnesses were used to polish harder-to-reach areas. When the upper and side portions of the shell were completed, the tent was once again removed in August 2005. On October 3, the omphalos was closed off as workers polished the final section. Every weld on the Cloud Gate underwent a five-stage process, required to produce the sculpture's mirror-like finish.
Cloud Gate was finally completed on August 28, 2005, and officially unveiled on May 15, 2006. The cost for the piece was first estimated at \$6 million; this had escalated to \$11.5 million by the time the park opened in 2004, with the final figure standing at \$23 million in 2006. No public funds were involved; all funding came from donations from individuals and corporations.
Kapoor's contract states that the constructed piece should be expected to survive for 1,000 years. The lower 6 feet (1.8 m) of Cloud Gate is wiped down twice a day by hand, while the entire sculpture is cleaned twice a year with 40 U.S. gallons (33 imp gal; 150 L) of liquid detergent. The daily cleanings use a Windex-like solution, while the semi-annual cleanings use Tide. A notable February 2009 rare incident saw two names etched in letters about 1 inch (25 mm) tall on the northeast side of the curved sculpture. The graffiti was removed by the same firm that did the original polishing.
## Reception
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley declared the day of the sculpture's dedication, May 15, 2006, to be "Cloud Gate Day". Kapoor attended the celebration, while local jazz trumpeter and bandleader Orbert Davis and the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic played "Fanfare for Cloud Gate", which Davis composed. The public took an instant liking to the sculpture, affectionately referring to it as "The Bean". Cloud Gate has become a popular piece of public art and is now a fixture on many souvenirs such as postcards, sweatshirts, and posters. The sculpture has attracted a large number of locals, tourists, and art aficionados from around the world. The sculpture is now the piece by which Kapoor is most identified in the United States.
Time describes the piece as an essential photo opportunity, and more of a destination than a work of art. The New York Times writes that it is both a "tourist magnet" and an "extraordinary art object", while USA Today refers to the sculpture as a monumental abstract work. Chicago art critic Edward Lifson considers Cloud Gate to be among the greatest pieces of public art in the world. The American Welding Society recognized Cloud Gate, MTH Industries and PSI with the group's Extraordinary Welding Award. Time named Millennium Park one of the ten best architectural achievements of 2004, citing Cloud Gate as one of the park's major attractions.
When the park first opened in 2004, Metra police stopped a Columbia College Chicago journalism student who was working on a photography project in Millennium Park and confiscated his film because of fears of terrorism. In 2005, the sculpture attracted some controversy when a professional photographer without a paid permit was denied access to the piece. As is the case for all works of art currently covered by United States copyright law, the artist holds the copyright for the sculpture. This allows the public to freely photograph Cloud Gate, but permission from Kapoor or the City of Chicago (which has licensed the art) is required for any commercial reproductions of the photographs. The city first set a policy of collecting permit fees for photographs. These permits were initially set at \$350 per day for professional still photographers, \$1,200 per day for professional videographers and \$50 per hour for wedding photographers. The policy has been changed so permits are only required for large-scale film, video and photography requiring ten-person crews and equipment.
In addition to restricting photography of public art, closing a public park for a private event has also been controversial. In 2005 and 2006, almost all of Millennium Park was closed for a day for corporate events. On both occasions, as one of the park's primary attractions, Cloud Gate was the focus of controversy. On September 8, 2005, Toyota Motor Sales USA paid \$800,000 to rent most venues in the park including Cloud Gate on AT&T Plaza from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. On August 7, 2006, Allstate paid \$700,000 to rent the park. For this price, Allstate acquired the visitation rights to a different set of features and only had exclusive access to Cloud Gate after 4 p.m. These corporate closures denied tourists access to Kapoor's public sculpture, and commuters who walk through the park were forced to take alternative routes. City officials stated that the money would help finance free public programs in Millennium Park.
In 2015, a sculpture similar to Cloud Gate was reported in Karamay, China at the site of an oil discovery, which according to Eduardo Peñalver, the Dean of Cornell Law School, "very probably" is a copyright infringement against Cloud Gate. Though designed to resemble an oil bubble, Kapoor hoped that legal action would be taken against what he termed a Chinese knockoff. Mayor Rahm Emanuel was less concerned and said that it was a flattering imitation.
A movement to "Windex the Bean" was started in 2017, with the premise that the sculpture is dirty and needs to be cleaned. Posted as an event on Facebook, over 2000 people marked themselves as "going". The post also spawned a variety of similar joke movements.
## Artistic themes
### Relevant Kapoor themes
Anish Kapoor has a reputation for creating spectacles in urban settings by producing works of extreme size and scale. Before creating Cloud Gate, Kapoor had created art that distorted images of the viewer instead of portraying images of its own. In so doing, he acquired experience blurring the boundary between the limit and the limitless. Kapoor drew on past experience to design Cloud Gate, in particular the designing of Sky Mirror (2001), a 20-foot (6.1 m) 10-short-ton (9 t; 9-long-ton) concave stainless steel mirror that also used a theme of distorted perception on a grand scale.
Kapoor's objects often aim to evoke immateriality and the spiritual, an outcome he achieves either by carving dark voids into stone pieces, or more recently, through the sheer shine and reflectivity of his objects. This Indian artist's works have no fixed identity, but rather occupy an illusionary space that is consistent with eastern theologies shared by Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism, as well as Albert Einstein's views of a non-three-dimensional world. Kapoor explores the theme of ambiguity with his works that place the viewer in a state of "in-betweenness". The artist often questions and plays with such dualities as solidity–emptiness or reality–reflection, which in turn allude to such paired opposites as flesh–spirit, the here–the beyond, east–west, sky–earth, etc. that create the conflict between internal and external, superficial and subterranean, and conscious and unconscious. Kapoor also creates a tension between masculine and feminine within his art by having concave points of focus that invite the entry of visitors and multiplies their images when they are positioned correctly.
### Cloud Gate themes
Kapoor often speaks of removing both the signature of the artist from his works as well as any traces of their fabrication, or what he refers to as "traces of the hand". He aspires to make his works look like they have independent realities that he reveals rather than creates. For him, removing all the seams from Cloud Gate was necessary in order to make the sculpture seem as though it was "perfect" and ready-made. These effects increase the viewer's fascination with it and makes them wonder what it is and where it came from. His attempts to hide his works' seams as an artist stand in contrast to Frank Gehry's architectural designs in the park, Jay Pritzker Pavilion and BP Pedestrian Bridge, which display their seams prominently.
Cloud Gate is described as a transformative, iconic work. It is similar to many of Kapoor's previous works in the themes and issues it addresses. While the sculpture's mirror effects are reminiscent of fun-house fairground mirrors, they also have a more serious intent; they help dematerialize this very large object, making it seem light and almost weightless. Cloud Gate is considered Kapoor's most ambitious use of complex mirrored form dynamics. Kapoor challenges his viewers to internalize his work through intellectual and theoretical exercise. By reflecting the sky, visiting and non-visiting pedestrians and surrounding architecture, Cloud Gate limits its viewers to partial comprehension at any time. The interaction with the viewer who moves to create his own vision gives it a spiritual dimension. The sculpture is described as a disembodied, luminous form, which is also how his earlier 1000 Names (1979–80) was described when it addressed the metaphysical and mystical.
The viewer physically enters the art when he walks underneath it into its "navel". The omphalos is a "warped dimension of fluid space". In this dimension, solid is transformed into fluid in a disorienting multiplicative manner that intensifies the experience. It is emblematic of Kapoor's work to deconstruct empirical space and venture into manifold possibilities of abstract space. The experience is described as a displaced or virtual depth that is composed of multiplied surfaces.
According to project manager Lou Cerny of MTH Industries, "When the light is right, you can't see where the sculpture ends and the sky begins." The sculpture challenges perception by distorting and deforming the surrounding architecture. The skyscrapers along East Randolph Street to the northeast (Two Prudential Plaza, and Aon Center), north (One Prudential Plaza) and northwest (The Heritage, Crain Communications Building) are reflected on Cloud Gate's surface when viewed from either the east or the west. The sculpture also warps viewers' perception of time by changing the speed of movements such as the passing of clouds.
Although in the conventional sense Cloud Gate is not an opening that leads anywhere in the same way that monumental gates do, it frames a view and is celebratory in the way it creates a ceremonial place. The work is credited with achieving a new level or understanding described as a transubstantiation of material, reminiscent of that which the artist experienced during a 1979 trip to India. Kapoor's 1000 Names evolved immediately after this trip; twenty-five years later he created Cloud Gate, an object that emerged from material forms to become immaterial.
Kapoor often relies on tenets of Hinduism in his art and says that "The experience of opposites allows for the expression of wholeness." Primal dualities that are one, such as the lingam and yoni, are important to Indian culture, and Cloud Gate represents both the male and female in one entity by symbolizing both the vagina and testicles. Thus, it represents the tension between the masculine and the feminine.
## In popular culture
The sculpture has been used as a backdrop in commercial films, notably in the 2006 Hollywood film The Break-Up, which had to reshoot several scenes because the sculpture was under cover for the initial filming. It is also prominently featured in the ending scene of Source Code. Director Duncan Jones felt the structure was a metaphor for the movie's subject matter and aimed for it to be shown at the beginning and end of the movie. The sculpture served as an aesthetic and symbolic setting for the 2012 film The Vow when the lead characters share a kiss under it. It also appears in the video to "Homecoming", a song by Chicago native Kanye West, featuring Chris Martin of the band Coldplay. The sculpture is also featured in the 2008 mumblecore film Nights and Weekends. It was also featured in the Bollywood film Dhoom 3 and the 2014 movie Transformers: Age of Extinction, the fourth installment in the Transformers series. A modified reproduction of Cloud Gate is also included in Watch Dogs, a video game released in 2014 that takes place in Chicago. Unlike the real sculpture, the in-game replica is a curved, white torus.
Cloud Gate plays a prominent role in Battle Ground, the 17th title in the Dresden Files urban fantasy novel series by Jim Butcher. In the Chicago of the novels, the sculpture was commissioned by Queen Mab, ruler of the Winter Court of Faerie, and proves to be hiding a large stockpile of armaments. Its placement by the Winter Court was in anticipation of a massive supernatural attack on the city of Chicago.
### Lawsuit against National Rifle Association
A June 2017 video by the National Rifle Association (NRA) entitled The Clenched Fist of Truth used an image of Cloud Gate. Anish Kapoor sued the NRA to stop running the video, pay any profits gained as a result of the video, compensate him for statutory damages equivalent to \$150,000 per infringement, and attorney fees. The suit was settled in December 2018 with the removal of the image from the NRA video.
## See also
- List of public art in Chicago
- Cloud Column'', 2006 sculpture by the same artist
|
731,653 |
Red wattlebird
| 1,153,532,436 |
Passerine bird native to southern Australia
|
[
"Anthochaera",
"Birds described in 1790",
"Birds of New South Wales",
"Birds of South Australia",
"Birds of Victoria (state)",
"Birds of Western Australia",
"Endemic birds of Australia",
"Taxa named by George Shaw"
] |
The red wattlebird (Anthochaera carunculata) is a passerine bird native to southern Australia. At 33–37 cm (13–14+1⁄2 in) in length, it is the second largest species of Australian honeyeater. It has mainly grey-brown plumage, with red eyes, distinctive pinkish-red wattles on either side of the neck, white streaks on the chest and a large bright yellow patch on the lower belly. The sexes are similar in plumage. Juveniles have less prominent wattles and browner eyes. John White described the red wattlebird in 1790. Three subspecies are recognized.
The species is found in southeast Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and southwest Western Australia in open forest and woodlands, and is a common visitor to urban gardens and parks. Loud and conspicuous, the red wattlebird is generally found in trees, where it gets most of its food; occasionally it forages on the ground. It is one of the largest nectarivorous birds in the world, feeding from a wide variety of flowering plants. Insects also comprise part of its diet. It is territorial and at times aggressive towards birds of other species, often defending rich sources of nectar. Breeding throughout its range, the red wattlebird builds a cup-shaped nest in a tree and raises one or two broods a year. Although it has declined in places from land-clearing, it is classified as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.
## Taxonomy
The red wattlebird was first described as the wattled bee-eater by the Irish surgeon and naturalist John White in his Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, which was published in 1790. He wrote that it was the "size of a missel thrush, but much larger in proportion". The taxonomic descriptions in White's book are believed to have been written by the English naturalist George Shaw, who is generally credited as the author by subsequent authorities. The specific epithet, carunculata, was introduced later in the same year by John Latham. The word is derived from caruncula, Latin for 'a small piece of flesh'. Both Shaw and Latham assigned the red wattlebird to the genus Merops. The species was moved to Anthochaera in 1827 by the naturalists Nicholas Aylward Vigors and Thomas Horsfield. The generic name derives from the Ancient Greek anthos 'flower, bloom' and khairō 'enjoy'.
Common names include gillbird, gilly warbler, barkingbird, muttonbird, butcherbird, what's o clock, and chock. Unlike many species in southwestern Australia, the red wattlebird was given names by the local indigenous people that were onomatopoeic (sounding like the calls they make). Names recorded include wodjalok, durdal, doongorok, and djoongong (this last name is also applied to the western wattlebird). In the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia, the local Barngarla people knew it as ngarkarko or ngarkabukko. The local people of Denial Bay in South Australia called it noggal, and the Ngarrindjeri people of the Lower Murray region in South Australia knew it as rungkan.
There are three recognised subspecies, though there is a zone of intermediate birds across western Victoria and eastern South Australia, bordered by western Port Phillip Bay to the east, Mount Lofty Ranges to the west, and Little and Big Desert national parks to the north. The differences in plumage are not generally prominent enough to be noticeable in the field.
- A. c. carunculata (Shaw, 1790) – found in southeast Australia, namely Victoria, eastern New South Wales, and southeastern Queensland.
- A. c. clelandi (Mathews, 1923) – Kangaroo Island (South Australia). Of a similar size to the nominate subspecies, it tends to have darker plumage, a longer bill, and shorter tarsus.
- A. c. woodwardi Mathews, 1912 – southwest and south-central Australia, west of the Mount Lofty Ranges. This subspecies is a little smaller than the nominate subspecies and has shorter wings. Its plumage is similar, though the yellow patch on the belly is more prominent.
Analysis of DNA showed that the closest relative of the red wattlebird is the yellow wattlebird of Tasmania, the pair splitting from the ancestor of the regent honeyeater—their next closest relative. Honeyeaters are related to the Pardalotidae (pardalotes), Acanthizidae (Australian warblers, scrubwrens, thornbills, etc.), and Maluridae (Australian fairy-wrens) in the large superfamily Meliphagoidea.
## Description
The sexes of the red wattlebird are similar in size and plumage, the length of the adult male ranging from 33 to 37 centimetres (13 to 15 in) and the adult female from 34 to 37 centimetres (13 to 15 in). With an average weight of 100–120 grams (3.5–4.2 oz), the red wattlebird is one of the largest nectar-feeding birds in the world, and the second largest species of honeyeater native to Australia, eclipsed only by the yellow wattlebird. The crown, forehead and upper lores (area between the eyes and nostrils) are dark brown, streaked with pale brown at the front of the crown and white at the rear of the crown. The nape (back of the neck) is slightly paler brown, with white streaks. A whitish triangular marking covers the lower lores and anterior ear covert feathers, bordered below by a dark brown stripe from the lower mandible down to the wattle and around to behind the eye. The throat is dark brown streaked with white. The iris of the eye is orange-red to crimson. The distinctive pinkish-red wattles dangle from the lower rear corner of the ear coverts on either side of the neck, and there is a sliver of pink bare skin at the lower border of the white patch on the face. The chest and belly are streaked white, and there is a bright yellow patch towards the tail. The strong legs and feet are pink or pinkish-brown, and the downward-curving bill is black. The average dimensions of the bill are 23.5 millimetres (0.93 in) long, 6.7 millimetres (0.26 in) wide, and 6.8 millimetres (0.27 in) high at its base. The gape is grey-black, while the inside of the mouth is orange. In common with other honeyeaters, the red wattlebird has a long, specialized tongue to extract nectar from flowers. The tongue can extend well beyond the tip of the bill, and is divided at the end to form a brush-like structure with over a hundred bristles that soak up nectar by capillary action.
The red wattlebird begins moulting after the breeding season, starting with the primary flight feathers in November or December, and finishing between the following March and May. The feathers of the breast, back, median and lesser covert feathers are moulted before those of the crown, remiges, and rectrices.
Immature red wattlebirds are generally less flamboyant. Juveniles have much less prominent wattles, brown irises, a pale crown, and much less yellow on the belly. They moult into first immature plumage within a few months of leaving the nest. First immature birds are more similar to adults overall, having red irises with brown rings, wattles larger but still smaller than adults, and a greyish pink gape.
The red wattlebird is hard to confuse with any other species, though in poor visibility it might be mistaken for the spiny-cheeked honeyeater, or little or western wattlebirds.
### Call
Red wattlebirds are noisy animals, producing a range of raucous calls. Pairs of birds appear to duet, particularly at food sources, with the male producing a loud cackle and the female a whistling call. The male's cackle is loudest between 1 and 3 kHz frequency. A guttural-sounding call, it has been variously described as having a squawking, coughing or hiccuping sound. Males cackle when foraging by themselves, when with other birds, or when declaring their territory to other birds. The whistling call consists of up to five rapid whistles that may or may not ascend in tone, and are repeated 3–4 times. Both sexes commonly utter a single chock note that may be harsh and guttural or have 4–5 harmonics. This is thought to be a contact call. These calls all carry over long distances.
Red wattlebirds utter two types of alarm calls, alternating between them while mobbing other animals. One is a harsh call over a wide frequency (1.3 to 5.9 kHz) that is louder at lower frequencies. The other is a lower-pitched staccato call with a frequency of 1.1–2.2 kHz. They give a harsh call when trying to distract intruders from the vicinity of the nest or when picked up, often trying to flap or peck the handler.
## Distribution and habitat
The red wattlebird is found in southeast Queensland, where it occurs south of Noosa and Cooloola, becoming more common south of Brisbane and Toowoomba. Further south into New South Wales it is found most places east of (and including) the Great Dividing Range and stretching west to the southern North-West Plain, Central Western Slopes and eastern Riverina, and is an occasional visitor to points along the Murray River valley. It is found across Victoria, though is uncommon in the northwest of the state. In South Australia, Devonborough Downs Station, Manunda, Wilpena Pound and Nullarbor Station mark the northern limits of its range. There are scattered records from the Nullarbor Plain, but the species is common in Western Australia west of 125 °E and south of 29 °S. The yellow wattlebird replaces it in Tasmania. The red wattlebird has become more common in some localities, such as the Sunraysia district in the 1960s, and Nambucca Heads and Lefevre Peninsula in the 1980s. Breeding numbers have increased in Sydney and Adelaide. The red wattlebird is a rare vagrant to New Zealand, with confirmed records at Matakana in 1865 and Rohutu, Taranaki, in 1885, and a third unconfirmed report from Motupiko in 1938.
The red wattlebird appears to be a permanent resident in much of its range, though its movements are poorly known. It appears to be partly migratory in Western Australia and the north coast of New South Wales. In southeastern New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, it appears to move to lower altitudes for winter. For instance, birds vacate the Brindabella Range over the cooler months. Overall, little pattern is discernible in the species' movements, though red wattlebirds appear to move to feed on populations of flowering banksias and eucalypts, such as winter-flowering banksias in Perth over the cooler months. Large numbers arrive in time to feed on flowering native apples (Angophora) in Mudgee and Cobbora districts in central-western New South Wales, and on white box (Eucalyptus albens) at Barrington in central-northern New South Wales. A mainly resident population on the Swan Coastal Plain near Perth is supplemented during winter by more arriving from inland areas. South of Perth, red wattlebirds are more locally nomadic, moving to new patches of blooming wildflowers. East of Perth in areas around Kellerberin, Kwolyin, and Nangeenan, the red wattlebird is present from late autumn to spring, breeding in August and September. Around Lake Grace, the red wattlebird is present year-round.
Open sclerophyll forest and woodland, generally dominated by eucalypts, is the most common habitat of the species. It is more common in forests with ample shrubby or grassy understory. It is less commonly encountered in shrubland, heath, or margins of wet sclerophyll forest. It is rarely found in mature pine plantations. Within urban areas, it is abundant in parks and reserves, gardens and golf courses, as well as orchards and vineyards. It occasionally ventures into subtropical, semi-arid or subalpine regions, and has been found up to 1,900 m (6,000 ft) above sea level. The red wattlebird is rarer in forests that have been affected by dieback (infection by the pathogen Phytophthora cinnamomi).
## Behaviour
A loud and active bird, the red wattlebird is found in pairs, in a small family group, or alone during the breeding season, and gathers in larger groups of up to several hundred birds over winter. It flies straight or with a slightly undulating pattern, alternating between gliding and flapping its wings with quick shallow beats, at or slightly above the level of the tree canopy. The red wattlebird moves on the ground by hopping, cocking its tail upwards slightly.
Aggressive and territorial, the red wattlebird defends its nest and sources of food against other birds. It either calls at, snaps at the tails of, or flies at other birds, sometimes scuffling with members of the same species or other large honeyeaters in the air. Displacement is a dominant display in which a red wattlebird will land on a perch that has been immediately vacated by another bird. A smaller red wattlebird adopts a horizontal appeasement posture side-on to the aggressor in which it lowers its head, flutters its wings and edges closer to the other bird.
As well as smaller bird species, red wattlebirds can mob and chase larger species, such as the Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen), butcherbirds, currawongs, the black-faced cuckooshrike (Coracina novaehollandiae), the olive-backed oriole (Oriolus sagittatus), crows, ravens, the laughing kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), and even small raptors like the collared sparrowhawk (Accipiter cirrocephalus).
### Breeding
The red wattlebird breeds throughout its range, with nesting taking place between July and December, though occasionally outside these months, if conditions are favourable. One or two broods are laid each year.
Red wattlebirds generally nest as solitary pairs. The nest is a cup-shaped structure formed from sticks and leaves, lined with bark, grass, and hair, between 2 and 16 metres (7 and 50 ft) above ground, usually in the forked branches of a tree—generally a eucalypt. The nest is usually located centrally rather than on the periphery of a tree. A study in Eastwood State Forest, near Armidale in New South Wales, found that red wattlebirds preferred to nest in manna gum (Eucalyptus viminalis) and apple box (E. bridgesiana).
A clutch of two or three pale brown- and lavender-spotted pinkish eggs are normally laid. They measure 33 mm × 22 mm (1+1⁄4 in × 7⁄8 in), and are a tapered oval in shape. The eggs are normally incubated by both parents, but sometimes just by the female. They hatch after 16–21 days. The chicks are born almost naked, with a small amount of grey down on their head and body. They are mostly brooded by the female, but sometimes the male will also brood. The nestlings are fed by both parents, and occasionally immature birds will contribute. Their eyes open at around 7 days. They fledge 15–20 days after hatching, and both parents continue to feed them for a further 2–3 weeks. Young are given manna (crystallised plant sap) and insects, such as beetles, bugs, and flies.
### Feeding
The red wattlebird is predominantly a nectar-feeder, foraging mostly in trees; in particular, climbing along branches (rather than the trunk) and probing flower-heads with its bill. One study in Bondi State Forest in southern New South Wales revealed that the species foraged at a height of 5.9 ± 5.8 m (19 ± 19 ft). They seldom look for food on the ground, though do so to feed on shrubs such as the cats paw (Anigozanthos humilis). The red wattlebird prioritises visiting flowers that produce a lot of nectar, such as those of eucalypts, banksias, grasstrees (Xanthorrhoea), and emu bushes (Eremophila). It often prefers plants with easy access to nectar, rather than those with tubular flowers (and thus difficult-to-access nectar). The red wattlebird seeks out yellow flower-heads of holly-leaved banksia (Banksia ilicifolia), which have much higher nectar content than the more mature red flower-heads. The species forages much more often in native than exotic plants, though the introduced coral tree (Erythrina) is popular. In addition to nectar, it takes insects and other small creatures, usually by hawking, and it also feeds on berries and other fruit. A field study in the Mount Lofty Ranges found that it spent twice as much time feeding on nectar compared to insects.
One field study found that red wattlebirds foraged for longer periods when nectar concentrations in flowers were low, and consumed fewer insects at this time. However, this could have been because the temperature was lower and hence insects were less active. In Gingin, Western Australia, 97% of red wattlebirds at a site of two mixed kangaroo paw species were observed feeding on a single species at its peak flowering: cats paw in August and red-and-green kangaroo paw (A. manglesii) in September, with very few visits to the other species or hybrids.
In central New South Wales, the red wattlebird forages more often on the foliage of the grey gum (Eucalyptus punctata) over other trees, though it does also show some preference for narrow-leaved ironbark (E. crebra), if grey gum is not present. Red wattlebirds tend to oust noisy friarbirds (Philemon corniculatus) where both species are present. The red wattlebird often forages alongside the New Holland honeyeater (Phylidonyris novaehollandiae), little friarbird (P. citreogularis), western and little wattlebirds, rainbow lorikeet (Trichoglossus moluccanus), purple-crowned lorikeet (Glossopsitta porphyrocephala), satin bowerbird (Ptilonorhynchus violaceus), pied currawong (Strepera graculina), and crimson rosella (Platycercus elegans), though they generally chase other nectar-feeding birds away from a horde of eucalypt flowers.
A field study, conducted in winter 1978 on Kangaroo Island, found red wattlebirds to be territorial around a rich source of nectar, namely a large cup gum (Eucalyptus cosmophylla), driving off smaller honeyeaters. This indicated that the species would exclude other species, if food was scarce. In New England National Park, red wattlebirds would be more aggressive when there were moderate amounts of nectar in groves of flowering banksias, but were less so at lean or abundant times.
The red wattlebird has a brush-tipped tongue, with a 17 mm (5⁄8 in) long segment bearing around 120 individual bristles. It feeds by placing the bill in a flower and inserting the tongue into its nectar chamber, drawing the nectar up by capillary action. The bristles increase the surface area of the tongue available for the uptake of nectar.
## Predators and parasites
The nests of red wattlebirds are often parasitized by the pallid cuckoo (Cacomantis pallidus), and less commonly by the Pacific koel (Eudynamys orientalis). Nest predators include the brown goshawk (Accipiter fasciatus), black falcon (Falco subniger), pied currawong (Strepera graculina), Australian raven (Corvus coronoides), common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula), domestic cat, and snakes.
Isospora anthochaerae is an Apicomplexan parasite that has been isolated from the red wattlebird in Western Australia, from oocytes collected from faecal samples. Species of bird louse that have been recorded on the red wattlebird include Menacanthus eurysternus, and members of the genera Brueelia, Myrsidea and Philopterus.
## Interactions with people
Red wattlebirds are adversely impacted by land and undergrowth clearing, and have vanished from some habitats thus altered. Despite this, they are classified as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, as they occur over a wide range, have a large population, and the population decline is not rapid. Red wattlebirds are regularly killed by cats and dogs, as well as being hit by cars on roads. In 1924 in northern Victoria, the red wattlebird was described as very wary, on account of being highly regarded (and shot) for its meat. Indeed, it was shot widely for food or sport, or because it was held to be a pest of vineyards or orchards. On occasion, red wattlebirds have raided vineyards and orchards for grapes, stone fruit, figs, olives, loquats, apples, pears, and berries, which they puncture and extract the juice or flesh from.
The red wattlebird has been kept as an aviary bird in Sydney. It is not difficult to look after, but can be very aggressive to other cage birds. Grevillea 'Robyn Gordon' is a useful companion shrub as it bears flowers all year round.
## Cited texts
- The title page of the issue has the year 1826.
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.